Two More on the Cartoon Riots

Via Matt Drudge, some Arab politicians are hoping to use the United Nations -- originally founded to help prevent warfare -- as a means of abridging freedom of speech (i.e., of delivering the West into the tyranny of dhimmitude).

Arab and Islamic governments should pressure the United Nations to ban the slandering of religions, said more than 200 Arab politicians who renewed their criticism today of the contentious Prophet Muhammad cartoons.

The call, which was made at the end of a two-day conference at a Dead Sea resort in Jordan, comes amid outrage felt throughout the Islamic world over the publication in a Danish newspaper of a series of cartoons of Islam's prophet.

"We urge Arab and Muslim governments to spare no effort to pressure the UN to issue a resolution banning the slandering of religions," the politicians from 16 Arab countries representing the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union said in a statement.

Regarding the United Nations, there seems no better time than the present to remember this gem of an Ayn Rand quote:

Wars are the second greatest evil that human societies can perpetrate. (The first is dictatorship, the enslavement of their own citizens, which is the cause of wars.)

What good is the United Nations if, on the pretense of preventing war, it aids in the destruction of freedom?

In related news, I learned today of the following threat by, believe it or not, an Anglican cleric! (HT: PigBoatSailor, who has more, including this.)

May we at this stage remind our Muslim brothers that they do not have the monopoly of violence in this nation. Nigeria belongs to all of us -- Christians, Muslims and members of other faiths. No amount of intimidation can Change this time-honoured arrangement in this nation. C.A.N. may no longer be able to contain our restive youths should this ugly trend continue. [bold added]

While I fully sympathize with the need to defend oneself against barbarous Moslems (and Peter Akinola's statement sounded pretty good up until the above quote), I am very concerned about the fact that he fails to point out that his followers, like others, have a right to defend themselves. Rather, Akinola drags in past sectarian violence on the part of his followers as a threat. (And loses the moral high ground in the process.)

This threat does nothing to educate Moslems on respect for individual rights. In fact, it cedes the premise that this is merely a religious conflict for the West. Much more is at stake than that. As Nick Provenzo put it so well recently, "[T]his conflict is not about religion -- it is about individual rights."

-- CAV

Mixed Economy, Mixed-up Politicians

Was in the Big Easy for a family Mardi Gras gathering and should have a good photo-blog of it when I have more time, which will probably not be until next week. Blogging this week may be irregular due to a busy schedule and out-of-town guests arriving Thursday.

***

Speaking of New Orleans, here's an article (annoying questions about ZIP, age, and sex required) about the recovery that unintentionally demonstrates what is wrong with our mixed economy.

In surprisingly blunt language Monday, three New Orleans City Council members said displaced public housing residents who are unwilling to work are unwelcome to return.

At a meeting of the council's Housing Committee, City Council President Oliver Thomas said that for too long government programs and agencies have "pampered" rather than improved lives. Consequently, former residents who don't want "to roll up their sleeves" are better off staying away, he said in remarks that generated murmured agreement from some members of the audience in the council chambers.

"We don't need soap opera watchers right now," Thomas said. "We're going to target the people who are going to work. It's not that I'm fed up, but that at some point there has to be a whole new level of motivation, and people have got to stop blaming the government for something they ought to do."

No "soap opera watchers", eh? Tough talk. The recovery ought to go swimmingly. Just like the immediate aftermath of the storm did.

The article goes on to say that although there has been no decision on whether to rebuild those of the city's notorious public housing complexes damaged by Katrina, some complexes are beginning to take residents back.

But Jarmon said they already are implementing changes to how residents are selected for the available permanent public housing. In the Iberville complex, for instance, about 400 of the 800 families who lived there before the storm want to return, HANO [Housing Authority of New Orleans] officials said. But all future residents have to comply with new entry restrictions. Officials said they include a background security check, which most former residents already had done, and a series of questions about employment history and prospects.

They dubbed the new wrinkles a "working preference" for future inhabitants. Basically, the questions center around pre-Katrina employment and post-Katrina employment plans.

Do you see the problem here? They're going to ask someone whether they "intend" to work before they put them back on the government housing dole. In the meantime, they're acting like popular, but ineffective high-school teachers feeding students test answers the day before midterms! "If you want to have free housing, say 'Yes' to that work intention question." Wink, wink. Tough words, but the message is clear: All you have to do is pay lip service to the idea of hard work in order to get public housing in New Orleans. What a way to rebuild!

In a fully free society, there would be no dole. There would also be no huge federal bailout of New Orleans. There would be no worries about louts coming back to town because they would have had to work to live there to begin with. They would have had a personal stake in (1) deciding whether to rebuild at all, and if so (2) the process of rebuilding itself. Also, they would already know that if they did not work, they would not have a home, whether or not they chose to return. They would not need to be told any of this.

As it is, Thomas, a politician who is doubtless himself wedded to the notion of dole on a much larger scale, namely, a federal bailout of New Orleans, is saying something that may sound good to small-government Republicans in Congress. However, it is actually a way to enable the welfare-state status quo. Oh, but I'm sure he "intends" to do the right thing. He said so.

The welfare state removes an important source of feedback by which one can guide one's actions: the consequences of those actions. And so it is that words lose their actual meanings, becoming instead a means of wheedling money from passing strangers. "Will work for housing" is words intended to empty your wallet. A more believable sound would be the that of a hammer hitting a nail over and over again. This gets results and doesn't cost me a dime. Note which was broadcast over national media and which I had to go to New Orleans itself to hear.

On the way home from New Orleans, my wife, who grew up in New Orleans, and I were talking about a couple of rebuilding plans we heard, and I pointed out to her that in past natural disasters, the victims themselves got together to do the rebuilding. In New Orleans, the recovery would involve the government every step of the way. I said, "This has the potential to be the most botched disaster recovery in American history." Her reply? "It already is."

A great way to bungle the recovery would be to rebuild the institutions of big government that demolished the work ethic of so many New Orleanians long before the storm hit.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Removed two paragraphs. (Thomas later questions the need to bring back every resident. This sounds better than bringing back all, but it does not challenge the basic premise of the welfare state.)

Quick Roundup 26

Until Tuesday, I am going to have either limited or no time to post. You may see me here this weekend or Monday, but just in case: I'll see you Tuesday!

Twice this week, I saw things pertinent to blog entries I'd just made. So now, I'll connect the dots....

First Followup

When I last posted about Chinese censorship, I had Ayn Rand's essay, "The Comprachicos", in mind when I wrote the following:

But this is what I found truly appalling. This story also gives us, by accident, a vignette of a little girl, excited about the Internet, with a beast like the "no-nonsense Ms Chen" for a mother.

Ms Chen, a police technology veteran, says inspiration for the personal sites came from her 15-year-old daughter who keeps her up to date on new internet possibilities.

And as Ms. Chen learns of these possibilities, she systematically destroys them.... I wonder, sadly, what will become of her daughter.

When I finally made my way over to Noodle Food, though, I found the following excerpt from an Ayn Rand quote on Immanuel Kant quite apropos, although on a much smaller scale.

Suppose you met a twisted, tormented young man and, trying to understand his behavior, discovered that he was brought up by a man-hating monster who worked systematically to paralyze his mind, destroy his self-confidence, obliterate his capacity for enjoyment and undercut his every attempt to escape. You would realize that nothing could be done with or for that young man and nothing could be expected of him until he was removed from the monster's influence.

Second Followup

And then, shortly after I wrote this:

The biggest problem we face in the fight for freedom of speech is, I think, not so much the need to convince people of the value of free speech, but the difficulty in helping them appreciate that it is just as much under threat now as their homes were after Kelo. With Kelo, people knew that the government meant business, and they knew that that business meant they'd be out on the streets. How do we get people to appreciate that Moslems really believe that sharia is God's will? And how do we help them realize that, with the cartoons being mysteriously absent from their newspapers, that they have already been served with an eviction notice?

I saw this cartoon at Cox and Forkum. I had been wanting to write an editorial about this for some time and couldn't see how to do it. The cartoon (as partly explained by Update I) shows exactly how to do it.

I have written an editorial and am awaiting results of the "wife test". Even if it passes, though, it's nowhere near the blockbuster this cartoon is. On the one hand, I haven't a canvas at my disposal -- not that I would have come up with this if I had. And on the other, Cox and Forkum are so good they make it look a lot easier than it really is to convey that point.

A Bleg

If my editorial passes the "wife test" (i.e., conveys its point to an intelligent non-Objectivist), I plan to submit it to Capitalism Magazine and probably a few other places. I would like to run it by someone who has been published there already before submitting it, for constructive criticism. Please email me if you follow this blog, you've appeared in Capitalism Magazine, and you're willing to do this. Click on "Contact" at the upper right and follow the directions.

I may also bug a couple of my other regular readers. You have been warned!

Defend Freedom of Speech!

The Undercurrent is preparing pamphlets on the Moslem jihad against free speech and needs support and distributors. Please stop by if you're inclined to help.

Carnival of the Objectivists

This is an idea whose time has come.

Silly Friday Quiz

I miss Myrhaf and his (snicker) memes already. I made do with the quiz below. Here are the results.

You Are Lightning

Beautiful yet dangerous People will stop and watch you when you appear Even though you're capable of random violence You are best known for: your power Your dominant state: performing

What Type of Weather Are You?

Random violence? Riiiiiiight.

This is discouraging.

Via The Politburo Diktat, is news that Denmark will be hosting an inter-religious dialogue conference (which should have been called off) and that Germany has sentenced a 61 year-old man to a year in prison, 300 hours of community service, and a suspended sentence of five years for printing toilet paper with the word "Koran" on it. President Bush should offer this man political asylum immediately.

Found en route to other things....

1. Here's a BBC time line on the cartoon riots. Among other things, I counted 34 dead in about three weeks. It is incomplete, however. For one thing, it fails to note that the Malay Prime Minister closed a newspaper there for reprinting the cartoons.

2. This column describes the initial letter sent to the Danish Prime Minister by eleven Moslem ambassadors before the cartoon riots started. After first asking Anders Fogh Rasmussen to "take all those responsible to task under law", they delivered this thinly-veiled threat.

We strongly feel that casting aspersions on Islam as a religion and publishing demeaning caricatures of the Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) goes against the spirit of Danish values of tolerance and civil society. This is on the whole a very discriminatory tendency and does not bode well with [sic] the high human rights standards of Denmark. We may underline that it can also cause reactions in Muslim countries and among Muslim communities in Europe.

Among the signatories are our "allies", the Saudis.

3. And, most chillingly of all, Power Line has this example of an American newspaper explaining why it will not publish the cartoons.

Our primary reason is fear of retaliation from...bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do...Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and ... could not in good conscience place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy. As we feel forced, literally, to bend to maniacal pressure, this may be the darkest moment in our 40-year-publishing history.

Blogroll Addition

I stopped by Alexander Marriott's Wit and Wisdom yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to find myself on his blogroll. His is one of those blogs you can safely tell someone to just go over and start scrolling. His latest post is a very interesting book review/recommendation.

Today I am recommending David M. Potter's seminal study of the crises and conflicts which prefaced the years before the Civil War, The Impending Crisis. The reason I think other, non-historians, would benefit from this book is very simple. Potter is perhaps one of the most gifted historians I have come across in terms of boiling down incredibly complex political actions and conflicts to their essentials, without losing their messiness. On top of that Potter writes in a very readable, logical, and clear style that will be very refreshing to all historians and non-historians alike.

That sounds very worthwhile already.

Enjoy your weekend!

-- CAV

Bush, Vatican Forget Freedom

Both the President and the Vatican had stern-sounding words for rioting Moslems today. Unfortunately, both, when read between the lines, had said exactly what the Moslems were hoping to hear.

First, the leader of the most powerful free country in the world, George W. Bush denounced the recent bombing of a major mosque in Iraq with the following words.

"The act was an evil act," Bush said. "The destruction of a holy site is a political act intending to create strife. So I am pleased with the voices of reason that have spoken out. And we will continue to work with those voices of reason to enable Iraq to continue on the path of a democracy that unites people and doesn't divide them."

Except for the fact that so much of what gets preached in mosques these days amounts to incitement, one could, I suppose, call such an act "evil". Too bad we didn't get the same term from our President concerning the worldwide jihad against free speech also known as "the cartoon riots". Here's an example of what he said about those:

First of all, I think its very important for people around the world to know that a free press is important for a democratic state. A free press for peaceful states, as well. Free press holds people to account. Free press makes sure that there is a check and a balance on people in power. Free press also must be a responsible press.

Secondly, I fully understand people taking -- not liking the cartoons. On the other hand, I do not believe that people should use that as a pretext for violence; nor do I appreciate the fact that some are using -- manipulating the anger over the cartoons to achieve political ends.

And therefore, its very important for governments to not allow policy to be set by those who are cynically manipulating the anger that some have felt over these cartoons.

"Fully understand people not liking the catroons"? Bush might as well cultivate a lisp and set money aside for his jizyah.

While he sounds like he understands the importance of freedom of speech here, his failure to morally condemn the deadly rioting reeks of weakness to these animals. "What will this man do to us if he is afraid even to state his mind about what we are doing?" they will rightly ask.

The man in charge of protecting our sacred rights has no business walking on eggshells just because some followers of the religion that inspired the deaths of 3,000 Americans in a single morning claim to be "offended". Until terrorism, rioting, and murder committed in Allah's name become newsworthy again, no Moslem has a right to be offended about anything coming from a Westerner.

And then there's the Vatican. Prima facie, the Catholic Church sounds far better.

After backing calls by Muslims for respect for their religion in the Mohammad cartoons row, the Vatican is now urging Islamic countries to reciprocate by showing more tolerance toward their Christian minorities.

Roman Catholic leaders at first said Muslims were right to be outraged when Western newspapers reprinted Danish caricatures of the Prophet, including one with a bomb in his turban. Most Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous. [bold added]

Note the two passages in bold. To the first, it is sad that the Church is asking for reciprocation from Moslems when our President fails to do even this much. (Indeed, he should be demanding and enforcing reciprocation from Moslems the world over for the rights their coreligionists enjoy in America.) But notice that the Church agrees that Moslems were "right to be outraged". Freedom is not what the Church is concerned about. Rather, the focus is on religion. Notice that the Church's entire focus is on the rights of Christians, and specifically, of them to practice their faith.

Both Washington and the Vatican have vigorously denounced acts against religion, but sound almost indifferent by comparison concerning acts against men. Moslems demonstrate so frequently with suicide bombings the consequences of placing a higher value on religion than on man's life that there is no excuse for a failure on anyone's part to appreciate the point. This makes the statements of both Bush and the Vatican completely unacceptable.

In each case, the notion that religion is more important than man's life was implicitly supported. Agreeing with your enemy's most evil premise is no way to confront him, to rally a defense, or to win.

-- CAV

PS: The piece on the Vatican is titled very aptly, coming from the mainstream media: "Vatican to Muslims: practice what you preach." this sounds fantastic to Westerners and fanatics alike. The Westerners will be thinking about the calls for "tolerance" from Moslems. But what of this Koranic verse: "Fight and slay the Unbelievers wherever ye find them. Seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war." Quran, Sura 9:5"? Looks like the fanatics already are "practicing what they preach".

PPS: Here's a very funny animated cartoon I learned about on the phone with my friend Tom. I believe the first word is Dutch for "sensitivity".

Updates

Today: Minor edits and added postscripts.

Quick Roundup 25

An Open Letter to Liberals and Conservatives

I like this article, which I found at Capitalism Magazine a few days ago for its straightforward exposition of what is wrong with the two "ends" of the political spectrum.

I am neither Liberal nor Conservative and I have political convictions at odds with both. So what is the difference between us?

Liberals believe the purpose of government is to "help people." Conservatives believe the purpose of government is to enforce morality. I believe the purpose of government is to protect individuals from being "helped" by the Liberals or forced to pray by the Conservatives.

People arrive at their political beliefs because of certain assumptions they make about the nature of reality and the nature of man. These ideas are what create our different political views.

Liberals believe reality is whatever they want it to be, all they have to do is believe strongly and join with like-minded people and reality will mold itself to the will of the people. This leads to the political belief that anything goes, as long as people vote on it.

Conservatives believe the world was created by an all-powerful God and reality is split into our low earthly realm of suffering and imperfection, and Gods realm of heavenly perfection. This leads to the political belief that anything goes, just as long as you act in the name of God.

Statistics and Induction

Curtis Weeks does some interesting number-crunching over at Phatic Communion, where he notes that in each of the past two years, more than double the number of murders have been committed in the United States than one could project per annum by Moslem jihadists. These calculations are done in response to the work of a site he says supports "the argument that 'Islam is the problem'," a proposition with which he presumably disagrees.

He then goes on to ask, "Do such claims mistake correlation for causation? Or is it magical thinking?" before quoting a line from the Koran that could be construed to contradict one cited by web site he is discussing -- if one has a halfway rational view of what constitutes an "aggressor". I would offer a third possible reason for making such a conclusion without "debating interpretations of the [Kor]an": induction. If you see the Sun rise each and every day, you can safely conclude that it will rise tomorrow without attaining a PhD in astronomy, or even understanding that it does not revolve around the Earth.

Weeks says this immediately after dismissing as "drumming in the point" a long quotation from the site that notes the staggering geographic distribution of Islamist aggression across the globe:

Its all about Iraq, isn't it?

Yep, its all about Iraq and

India and the Sudan and Algeria and Afghanistan and New York and Pakistan and Israel and Russia and Chechnya and the Philippines and Indonesia and Nigeria and England and Thailand and Spain and Egypt and Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia and Ingushetia and Dagestan and Turkey and Kabardino-Balkaria and Morocco and Yemen and Lebanon and France and Uzbekistan and Gaza and Tunisia and Kosovo and Bosnia and Mauritania and Kenya and Eritrea and Syria and Somalia and California and Kuwait and Virginia and Ethiopia and Iran and Jordan and United Arab Emirates and Louisiana and Texas and Tanzania and Sri Lanka and Pennsylvania and Belgium and Denmark and East Timor and Qatar and Maryland and Tajikistan and the Netherlands and Scotland and...

... and pretty much wherever Muslims believe their religion tells them to:

"Fight and slay the Unbelievers wherever ye find them. Seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war." Quran, Sura 9:5

Or, as Mark Steyn put it so well:

These days, whenever something goofy turns up on the news, chances are it involves some fellow called Mohammed. A plane flies into the World Trade Center? Mohammed Atta. A gunman shoots up the El Al counter at Los Angeles airport? Hesham Mohamed Hedayet. A sniper starts killing gas-station customers around Washington, DC? John Allen Muhammed. A guy fatally stabs a Dutch movie director? Mohammed Bouyeri. A terrorist slaughters dozens in Bali? Noordin Mohamed. A British subject from Hounslow, West London, self-detonates in a Tel Aviv bar? Asif Mohammed Hanif. A gang rapist preys on the women of Sydney? Mohammed Skaf.

To make Weeks's comparison completely accurate, one must do one of two things: Either consider all murders or consider only murders animated by some ideology. Unfortunately, Weeks compares Islamist murders alone against any and all murders committed in the U.S. (And he should have quadrupled the U.S. figure to account for the fact that there about quadruple the number of Moslems worldwide than there are Americans.)

If he accounts for all murders in the Islamic world, he should account for atrocities such as those committed by Saddam Hussein when he was in power, what is going on now in Darfur, where the attempted murder of at least a million black non-Moslems is in progress, and so on. He might dispute whether the genocide in Darfur is religious in nature, but he's the one who decided to be less-than-fussy about such matters.

Or he should cut through the cognitive clutter and compare Islamic murders to other cases in which followers of an ideology have performed atrocities in accordance with that ideology. The genocide in Darfur reminds me of at least three instances offhand of mass murders committed by Communists: at least seven million by Stalin, 30 million killed in China's "Great Leap Forward", and most recently, two million during Pol Pot's rule of Cambodia.

Would Weeks dispute whether "Communism is the problem" here? If so, I wonder at what point he would excuse one from examining the minutiae of some belief system to determine whether it "is the problem" when its followers, presumably animated by these beliefs, commit so many atrocities. Furthermore, I would hasten to add that I would not conclude from this that Islam is necessarily any "less dangerous" than Communism. Rather, I would take these data as a warning that we do not want to find out what life would be like under Islam. The United States, even with all those murders, sure seems like a safe place when we consider that. And it might be worth examining what about its predominant ideology differs from Islam and Communism that makes it that way.

I disagree with this analysis, with the notion that it is unreasonable to conclude that something about Islam is causing so many of its followers to kill in its name, and with the idea that it is unimportant to attempt to understand why.

Eric Raymond on "Meme Warfare"

New Linker informed me of an article by open source guru Eric S. Raymond that contains a wealth of interesting information on the Soviet "disinformation" campaign of the Cold War.

In a previous post on Suicidalism, I identified some of the most important of the Soviet Union's memetic weapons. Here is that list again:

* There is no truth, only competing agendas.

* All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the Wests history of racism and colonialism.

* There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.

* The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.

* Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.

* The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)

* For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But oppressed people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.

* When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorists point of view, and make concessions.

As I previously observed, if you trace any of these back far enough, you'll find a Stalinist intellectual at the bottom. (The last two items on the list, for example, came to us courtesy of Frantz Fanon. The fourth item is the Baran-Wallerstein world system thesis.) Most were staples of Soviet propaganda at the same time they were being promoted by progressives (read: Marxists and the dupes of Marxists) within the Western intelligentsia.

I haven't had time to go through the entire post which is, I believe, part of a series, but the real question isn't "What 'memes' did the Soviets release into the West?" It's, "What about the West enabled the Soviets to spread their demoralizing propaganda so easily?"

Many commonly-accepted beliefs, such as altruism as a moral ideal, were already present in the West. The Soviets merely cashed in on them by crafting propaganda that elaborated upon these beliefs.

The Objective Standard

According to the email list, Craig Biddle's essay, "Introducing The Objective Standard", is now online.

It is widely believed today that our cultural and political alternatives are limited either to the ideas of the secular, relativistic left -- or to those of the religious, absolutist right--or to some compromised mixture of the two. In other words, ones ideas are supposedly either extremely liberal or extremely conservative or somewhere in-between. We at The Objective Standard reject this false alternative and embrace an entirely different view of the world.

I'm looking forward to receiving my copy in the mail soon!

-- CAV

Cartoon Controversy Reaches Iraq

By the Appeasement Press

Sectarian violence threatened to spiral out of control in Iraq after Wednesday's bombing of one of the holiest Shiite shrines there.

Built by Caliph al-Mutasim in 836, the mosque was topped by a golden dome, known to Sunnis as "The Turban" in 1905 under Mazaffar al-Din Shah, whom the rival sect sometimes refer to as "The Dane".

Many Sunnis considered the structure offensive to Islam because it resembled a mythical unflattering caricature of Mohammed, with windows beneath the "turban" as "eyes" and minarets shaped, deliberately, to resemble the ears of an ass.

The bombing Wednesday was referred to as a "first resort" step towards rectifying the situation. One source close to "Operation Restore Dignity and Peace" said that the resemblance between the mosque and the imaginary caricature was so obvious that, "Even speaking to these sons of jackals was out of the question."

Shiite reaction to the bombing, deadly violence, was predictable, but many Westerners were surprised by its motivation. "It seems," says Spencer Q. McGillycuddy, Chair of Islamic Studies at Willoughby University, "that the Shiites, too, have their own mythical unflattering caricature of Mohammed, and that after the bombing, their mosque now resembles that caricature."

According to McGillycuddy, the mythical caricature of the Shiites resembles none other than the character Eric Cartman of the popular American comedy Series, South Park, looking over a berm during a snowball fight.

"Just look at that 'after' shot -- and then look at Cartman," said McGillycuddy. "The minarets in this image are said to be a pair of dreidels, the tops enjoyed by Jewish children during Hanukkah. According to local legend, Cartman has stolen these from the Jewish character Kyle Broflovski, and plans to sell them.

"Although local Shiites who have seen South Park while in America have been known to stamp up and down and generally caterwaul at Cartman's continual anti-semitic harrassment of Kyle, his gluttony and avarice are regarded as unbefitting a warrior."

"Furthermore, they wonder why he hasn't smashed the tops." McGillycuddy added, "They wonder why Kenny dies in every episode rather than Kyle -- at Cartman's hands. And so what if Cartman once used the momentum from The Passion of the Christ to start a neo-Nazi cell? They're wondering why he spent so much time marching around and so little destroying things."

According to McGillycuddy, the idea of the prophet playing games and having his hands defiled by snow is bad enough, but the bombing "basically created a structure depicting the prophet as a fat American child who plays with Jewish toys rather than enjoying a good, wholesome caravan raid. That is, of course, beyond the pale!"

"The Shiites could care less about the mosque or even the ammunition they'd stockpiled there. They know that that the Yanks will rebuild the mosque and resupply them with weaponry. They've got their knickers in a wad about having a mosque that looks like a cartoon character peeking over a berm during a snowball fight."

***

Think I'm being "insensitive" in this satire of Moslem sectarian violence? Go talk to the Shiites whose response to this bombing was to go attack the nearest Sunni mosque. And if you don't think Sunnis would have behaved any differently, I can sell you the Brooklyn Bridge for a very good price.

-- CAV

Around the Web on 2-22-06

Next week, I will be on the road for at least part of Monday, and hosting out-of-town guests later in the week. Blogging will likely be lighter than usual. It is quite possible that I will post my weekly roundup in a late and/or somewhat abbreviated form, if at all.

Tycoons, Especially, Take Note

The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism is soliciting donations in order to file amicus curiae briefs.

Since its inception, the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism has filed several amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs with American courts, including briefs on the Microsoft antitrust case, the Nike commercial speech case, the University of Michigan affirmative action cases and a case involving the application of the antitrust laws to the US Postal Service.

The reason that the Center elected to file the briefs is academic: the decisions of the US Supreme Court and lower courts affect the freedom and prosperity of every American. Additionally, as the most intellectual branch of our government, the courts are the realm where Objectivists are particularly well-suited toward having a positive impact.

Building upon CAC's groundbreaking legal advocacy, I propose a new effort to submit amicus curiae briefs on every key case before the Supreme Court that impacts the right of Americans to live for their own sake and to profit from their own work. I solicit the financial support of Objectivists who believe in fighting for their freedom....

I ask my readers to consider donating to this worthy cause, and to inform others of this fund drive.

Oh! Now they have a name.

Nick Provenzo also points out an article about a newly-identified species of conservative, the "crunchy conservative", that opposes capitalism and espouses environmentalism. From the Wall Street Journal:

Four years ago, [Rod] Dreher[, a columnist and editor at the Dallas Morning News] coined the term "crunchy conservatism" (as in crunchy granola) to describe hybrids like himself: political right-wingers with countercultural sensibilities. Now, in a book based largely on interviews and his own experience, he explores the type in depth. But "Crunchy Cons" is not a pallid work of sociology. It is a rousing altar call to spiritual secession from an America that Mr. Dreher sees as awash in materialism, consumerism and "lifestyle-libertarian" thinking.

In other words, we now have an example of a conservative which is the diametric opposite of a capitalist.

Long-time readers of my blog will find only the fact that this species has finally been named to be new information. Consider: (1) a recent global warming junket to Alaska by John McCain and his potential presidential running mate, Lindsey Graham; (2) an article called "What would Jesus cut?" I blogged awhile back; and (3) a children's book/national treasure hunt which sounds like it would be right up a crunchy-con's alley.

Madness or Genius?

Andy Clarkson has a very interesting post up at The Charlotte Capitalist on the Dubai Ports World controversy, in which George Bush and Jimmy Carter have become strange bedfellows, and opposed by apparently every other American politician.

If Dubya does has something up his sleeve, Carter would be the perfect stooge to serve as cover. But he is, in the meantime, also scaring the bejesus out of everyone who cares about this country.

Toonophobia

John Cox and Allen Forkum, whose coverage of the Moslem cartoon riots has been both thorough and heroic, have outdone themselves with the below cartoon and commentary.

They quote the following from Christopher Hitchens:

The silky ones may be more of a problem in the long term than the flagrantly vicious and crazy ones. Within a short while -- this is a warning -- the shady term "Islamophobia" is going to be smuggled through our customs. Anyone accused of it will be politely but firmly instructed to shut up, and to forfeit the constitutional right to criticize religion. By definition, anyone accused in this way will also be implicitly guilty. Thus the "soft" censorship will triumph, not from any merit in its argument, but from its association with the "hard" censorship that we have seen being imposed over the past weeks. A report ($$) in the New York Times of Feb. 13 was as carefully neutral as could be but nonetheless conveyed the sense of menace. "American Muslim leaders," we were told, are more canny. They have "managed to build effective organizations and achieve greater integration, acceptance and economic success than their brethren in Europe have. They portray the cartoons as a part of a wave of global Islamophobia and have encouraged Muslim groups in Europe to use the same term." In other words, they are leveraging worldwide Islamic violence to drop a discreet message into the American discourse.

I thank Cox and Forkum for their brave and able defense, on the ideological front, of our freedom of speech.

Review of Thomas Paine

Jennifer Snow has posted a nice review of a collection of Thomas Paine's writings over at Literatrix.

My initial impression is that this man was the absolute nuclear generator of quotes; even more so than Ayn Rand, and she is eminently quotable. The reason that both were very quotable is, in my mind, that both spent their time turning a vast complexity of information into simple, memorable principles. They are different, though, in that when you quote Ayn Rand, you have to remember that you are summoning up a vast context for your quote and be careful not to oversimplify the case. Thomas Paine's quotes generally require little or no context, and he frequently manages to oversimplify the case without the interference of any outside agency.

His writings are fascinating because they outline, in exquisite detail, the essence of the American character with all its strengths and flaws. He is adept on the attack, especially in revealing the inanity of other views, but he is not very good at defending his own ideas; his defense consists frequently of announcing that his idea is the only alternative to the ridiculous. He rejects fanatical religion for a secular lifestyle but still maintains the air of theology. He attempts to moderate freedom with progressive social programs.

It is lengthy, but I am sure you can see why you should read it all.

Finished, On Hold, and On the Way

Myrhaf, whose blog I have really enjoyed over its short existence, has decided to stop blogging in order to devote more time to other pursuits. Stop by to wish him well.

Felipe Sediles reports that you should disregard any milk cartons with his picture on them. Among the many things that are distracting him from blogging are his upcoming PhD candidacy exams. Stop by and tell the lad to get his priorities straight say "Hi!"

David the Machine, who sometimes comments on my blog and recently helped me with my new blog template, is getting ready to start blogging. No posts yet, but the template is pretty nice. Stop by from time to time for, "status reports of the progress of [his] continued enlightenment in all things: animal, vegetable, or mineral." I'm looking forward to reading his new blog.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a typo.

Property Rights in the Hurtt Locker?

Houston's police chief, who was apparently the last man in town to notice that importing busloads of thugs from New Orleans might cause an increase in the crime rate, has decided to show his detractors once and for all that he is no one-trick pony. Chief Hurtt recently showed that his grasp of the concept of property rights is no less slippery than his grasp of causality (or at least of his duty to inform the public that a certain group of people may be committing lots of crime).

Houston's police chief on Wednesday proposed placing surveillance cameras in apartment complexes, downtown streets, shopping malls and even private homes to fight crime during a shortage of police officers.

"I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother, but my response to that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?" Chief Harold Hurtt told reporters Wednesday at a regular briefing.

...

Building permits should require malls and large apartment complexes to install surveillance cameras, Hurtt said. And if a homeowner requires repeated police response, it is reasonable to require camera surveillance of the property, he said. [bold added]

The story goes on to cite concerns that the cameras would be used for unreasonable searches (a valid and important point) and their cost (a nonessential), but completely misses a very important additional point: Forcing people to install such surveillance cameras on their own property would violate their property rights. Fortunately, Mayor Bill White, though not likely great champion of property rights in this context, does at least seem a little more deliberate than the Chief: "[White] called the chief's proposal a 'brainstorm' rather than a decision."

On the privacy/unreasonable search issues: I do not by any stretch hold myself out as an expert on the "right to privacy", if there really is such a thing. (And would welcome any reader suggestions for a good, short introduction to the topic intended for laymen. I only joke about being a trial lawyer, after all.) Nevertheless, I do find myself highly suspicious of government efforts to place ordinary citizens under surveillance when there is no suspicion of criminal activity because of the obvious potential for abuse.

This concern about government-run surveillance equipment does not mean that surveillance cameras in apartment complexes are in and of themselves a bad thing-- so long as they are monitored by private parties and those on the premises know in advance that they are being monitored. This would reduce the potential for abuse by (1) giving people the chance to avoid the premises entirely (The reach of a prying or abusive landowner ends at his property line. This is yet another reason the government, for which no such restrictions would apply, should not be in the business of watching private citizens.) and (2) having the government available to protect against the unscrupulous use of such equipment. Such equipment could also aid law enforcement in that when there is reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, some of the necessary surveillance apparatus might already be in place, and could be manned or monitored by law enforcement on a strictly ad hoc basis. I presume that this would require a warrant.

In any event, I have to say that my opinion of my city's police chief drops like a rock every time I hear him open his mouth.

-- CAV

Notes:

(1) My thanks to the Resident Egoist for pointing out this article.

(2) Related: Paul Hsieh of Noodle Food discusses privacy rights and private surveillance a bit in this post on a privately-filmed incident on a subway that was subsequently circulated on the Internet. I found this bit particularly helpful.

Quick Roundup 24

Geek Love

Reader Adrian Hester digs up yet another hilarious tee shirt. In case you can't read it:

Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF
All my base
Are belong to you

Don't get it? Go here. Or here.

Surprise!

Clerics of the "Religion of Peace" say that using nuclear weapons is OK.

The spiritual leaders of the ultra-conservatives [in Iran] have accepted the use of nuclear weapons as lawful in the eyes of shari'a. Mohsen Gharavian, a disciple of [Ayatollah] Mesbah Yazdi [who is Iranian President Ahmadinejad's spiritual mentor], has spoken for the first time of using nuclear weapons as a counter-measure. He stated that "in terms of shari'a, it all depends on the goal."

It seems that if you are an Islamic cleric that as long as that voice in your head your imaginary friend Allah approves of that goal, whatever you want to do is all right by him.

And remember: What the term "counter-measure" means will be decided by people in a country which seems proud of the fact that

... Mahmoud Ahmadinejad managed, in a very short time, to get the world to forget all about bin Laden. Now all eyes are on the Islamic Republic, and everyone is talking about the danger it [poses]. Two weeks ago, the strategy of assaulting [foreign] embassies was formed as well. America regards Iran and Syria as being behind the recent violent incidents, including the setting fire to embassies in Islamic countries. Mr. Ahmadinejad has managed to take the place of bin Laden...

Quick! Someone let Mr. Bush know that we won't offend the Moslems if we decide to employ some "counter-measures" of our own.

Houston 1836 Update

Myrhaf recently reported that the multiculturalists have apparently succeeded in getting the owners of Houston's new professional soccer team to change its name to something else from the date of the city's founding, 1836, because it might "offend" Mexicans. Texas won independence from Mexico that same year.

A commenter there noted that this might be more of a business decision dressed in multiculturalist garb to "look good" as the owners hoped to please a major portion of their fan base. Houston is split about evenly three ways among whites, blacks, and Hispanics, and the last are far more likely to attend games. (A crowd at a friendly match I attended between the national teams of the U.S. and Mexico was about 70% Mexican.) This sounded plausible, though still cowardly, to me until I read the following.

When the name 1836 was announced, not many people were crazy about it.

It was unorthodox for the American sports scene, which made it unique.

It was a fit for a city and a state proud of their history and where a visitor is likely to spot more Texas flags than U.S. flags flying from homes, cars and businesses.

Team president Oliver Luck said the name was never intended to be offensive to the Hispanic community, and those who are offended should believe him.

It's no secret that many influential Hispanics were, from the beginning, consulted about the name, and no objection was made then.

The name fell victim to a strong push by some in the corporate and political communities. It also fell victim to a drive by some within the media.

In the end, it was less about those who felt offended by the name and more about specific agendas set forth by some. [bold added]

I didn't much care for the name, but I care far less for the craven attitude displayed by the owners of the team formerly known as 1836. Certainly, one doesn't want to alienate a major part of the fan base, but it is obvious that reasonable steps were already taken in that direction. Once again, multiculturalism shows that it is about anything but political tolerance. If I ever attend a game, maybe I'll wave a placard labeled "1836".

A Carter Masterpiece of Evasion

Last night, I found myself in a foul mood and in need of comic relief. How fortunate that ex-President Jimmah Carter had decided to weigh in on the recent elections in Hamastan!

This piece would be nearly Swiftian but for the fact that its writer believes every word he wrote. Carter basically ignores mountains of evidence to the contrary that Hamas and the people who elected them are savages, looking instead at that molehill of commonality with the West, the mechanics of their parliamentary government, to claim deliriously something to the effect of "They're just like us, so let's trust them. And give them money."

I guffawed when he expressed hope that Hamas might "propose moderates or technocrats for prime minister". A technocrat? Why does this make me think of Michael Dukakis wearing an oversized turban and strapping on explosives?

And then there's his schtick about what a great bulwark against abuse Mahmoud Abbas presents to Hamas.

Abbas also has the power to select and remove the prime minister, to issue decrees with the force of law when parliament is not in session, and to declare a state of emergency. As commander in chief, he also retains ultimate influence over the National Security Force and Palestinian intelligence.

I guess -- until Hamas decides to assassinate him or threatens him enough to transform him into a rubber stamp in human form. Does Carter even know what a terrorist is? Or could it be that what Hamas wants is so obviously "true" to him that he can't imagine Hamas needing to force anyone to toe the line?

Most ludicrous, though, was Carter's whole basic point, which is captured best in the following paragraphs.

Abbas informed me after the election that the Palestinian Authority was $900 million in debt and that he would be unable to meet payrolls during February. Knowing that Hamas would inherit a bankrupt government, U.S. officials have announced that all funding for the new government will be withheld, including what is needed to pay salaries for schoolteachers, nurses, social workers, police and maintenance personnel.

...

This common commitment to eviscerate the government of elected Hamas officials by punishing private citizens may accomplish this narrow purpose, but the likely results will be to alienate the already oppressed and innocent Palestinians, to incite violence, and to increase the domestic influence and international esteem of Hamas. It will certainly not be an inducement to Hamas or other militants to moderate their policies.

...

It would not violate any political principles to at least give the Palestinians their own money....

Sure, Jimmy. Let's please let the Hamastanis have what is theirs, provided we get to keep what is ours. They're nearly a billion in debt and the United States is merely ceasing to continue forking over the money of its own citizens to these brutes. And the idea that continued aid will "induce" a moderation in anyone's policies has already been shown farcical by the fact that the Hamastanis elected terrorists bent on the destruction of Israel while receiving aid.

To allow the Hamastanis to reap what they sow is not to "punish" them, but to permit them to suffer the consequences of their own actions. If there is one thing that would either remove them as a threat or help them grow up, this is exactly it. We should be talking about a total blockade of Hamastan, not a relaxation of a minor curtailment of aid.

As always, Carter, our nation's elder doddering statesman gets things completely wrong.

-- CAV

Property and Speech

Two issues illustrate a huge problem faced by anyone concerned with the cartoon riots: How does one stem the tide of multiculturalism, which threatens us with dhimmitude as people fail to stand up for their freedom of speech by standing with the cartoonists?

Bear with me for a moment as I bring up something apparently unrelated: this bit of good news on the reactions of state legislatures to the Supreme Court's universally-reviled Kelo decision.

In a rare display of unanimity that cuts across partisan and geographic lines, lawmakers in virtually every statehouse across the country are advancing bills and constitutional amendments to limit use of the government's power of eminent domain to seize private property for economic development purposes.

This is truly amazing at first glance. One would think that Democrats, seeing projects like the one in New London, Connecticut, that started this mess as a means of raising property values and thus tax receipts, would not be so swift to jump on this bandwagon. Plenty of Republicans, too.

Of course, politicians are timid creatures who stick their fingers in the wind constantly, so all but the most principled will abandon their professed beliefs at the first sign of significant public opposition. So where did all this opposition come from? Almost everybody, it seems. I recall stopping by a few lefty blogs after Kelo and even the ones who have never met a tax cut they didn't hate were suddenly singing hymns on the sanctity of the home.

In America, it seems that virtually everyone understands on a fundamental level the importance of making sure that private citizens can't simply be evicted from their own homes. I am sure that everyone came up a huge list of things they love about their homes and would be damned before letting the government help someone take them away.

Now consider the cartoon riots. Many people -- but mostly those of us who frequently exercise our freedom of speech -- are properly outraged over our government's tepid response to this blatant assault on our freedom of speech. However, most people seem almost oblivious to the problem even beyond what could be chalked up to the miserable failure of our media to report what's going on. Amit Ghate provides a very illuminating quote from a story in the Daily Telegraph about the trend towards dhimmitude in Britain:

Perhaps the explanation is just that they do not take it seriously. "I fear that is exactly the problem," says Dr Sookhdeo. "The trouble is that Tony Blair and other ministers see Islam through the prism of their own secular outlook.

They simply do not realise how seriously Muslims take their religion. Islamic clerics regard themselves as locked in mortal combat with secularism.

"For example, one of the fundamental notions of a secular society is the moral importance of freedom, of individual choice. But in Islam, choice is not allowable: there cannot be free choice about whether to choose or reject any of the fundamental aspects of the religion, [my bold] because they are all divinely ordained. God has laid down the law, and man must obey.

And I would say that many Britons also do not appreciate the threat posed by the Islamists, or their representatives would be acting to protect freedom of speech in an anti-Kelo-esque "rare display of unanimity".

I think that most people in America and perhaps other parts of the West would begin to awaken to this threat if they realized what it meant to them on a personal level. (And bloggers are ahead on that score because we are more directly affected by what has transpired so far.) Who would take, sitting down, being told to shut up every other word? Who would accept for himself the kind of self-imposed censorship that has kept Mo off television and the front pages of virtually every American paper if they understood it to mean, "Shut your piehole, infidel?" If they realized that that they were next?

But whereas most people appreciate the fact that the government, if it says it wants to take away your house, will take away your house, I don't think most people either take the Islamists seriously enough or appreciate on a personal level what not showing the cartoons for fear of offending Moslems really means. The Islamists want to be able to tell us what to do and what not to do. They mean it. Too bad the people they are speaking to don't believe them to begin with or understand the scope of the orders they are being given.

The biggest problem we face in the fight for freedom of speech is, I think, not so much the need to convince people of the value of free speech, but the difficulty in helping them appreciate that it is just as much under threat now as their homes were after Kelo. With Kelo, people knew that the government meant business, and they knew that that business meant they'd be out on the streets. How do we get people to appreciate that Moslems really believe that sharia is God's will? And how do we help them realize that, with the cartoons being mysteriously absent from their newspapers, that they have already been served with an eviction notice?

This difficulty is also the biggest opportunity: If people began to fully appreciate this threat, I have a feeling our politicians might suddenly become a lot more willing to stop snivelling about offended Moslems and start fighting to protect the right to freedom of speech possessed by their angry and impatient constituents.

I am not sure how to do this, but someone needs to figure this out. Fast.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 23

Kinda Neat

Probably the post which draws more hits to this blog than any other, my review of Sam Harris's The End of Faith, has just been listed at complete-review.com.

Venti This

Myrhaf writes a scene based on one of my pet peeves: The pidgin Starbucks tries to force its customers to use just to order coffee. Did you know they even have a guide out at their stores (and on the web)? At one point, it explains, for those of us who insist on using such gauche terms as "small", "medium", and "large", that:

[I]f we call your drink back in a way that's different from what you told us, we're not correcting you. We're just translating your order into "barista-speak" -- the standard way our baristas call out orders. This language gives baristas the info they need in the order they need it so they can make your drink as quickly and efficiently as possible.

That sounds almost plausible, if you can get past the fact that the first thing Starbucks does is unnecessarily rename their drink sizes from terms that are perfectly unambiguous to begin with. And then there's the breezy, informal usage in their explanation, which is obviously intended to sound trendy, like they hope their silly size names will. It's merchandizing plain and simple. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I wish they'd just admit it.

Call me a curmudgeon. Call me clueless if you must. But I standardized on the Queen's English long ago and I'm not going to use a made-up word like "venti" to order over-priced, over-roasted, astringent coffee when I'm desperate for caffeine.

A few things

... slipped my mind during last week, which was very busy for me.

Curtis Weeks hit the big 3-5 last week.

Robert Tracy, who was on hiatus, is back in the blogging game. I particularly liked the image in this post on Ken Davies, who uses a technique called trompe l'oeil.

When I made my template change last week, Eric Ryle's submarine news blog, The Sub Report, which I had listed as a news resource, ended up no longer on my blog's front page. I have added it to the blogroll.

The Undercurrent is seeking submissions for its sixth issue. These are due by March 1. (HT: Diana Hsieh, who also passes along an excellent marketing suggestion from Zach Oakes.)

Feeling Plucky?

Jason Roberts contemplates the motto I adopted as my own back in high school, Carpe diem.

This focus on production is the key distinction between the more unspecified, often hedonistic "Seize the day!" and the specified, hard working "Pluck the day!" It might sound better, however, to say "Produce today!" Nevertheless, this once inspiring phrase should have a more dear meaning to all Americans. That famous Yankee Ingenuity is in fact the same thing as "Carpe Diem!". And just like the Romans, it is now the Americans who dominate the world; not because of Imperial might, but because of Productive Ability. To put it more simply, Americans are just damn good pluckers.

And when you're done with that, go to his main page and see what else Jason, always a good read, has been up to lately.

The Sanction of the Victim

Is the real "nuclear bomb" in the current war against the West. As I said in a previous post:

Unless we all stand up to these brutes, we will be given a choice of death or "life" by their permission (in other words, living death). The former is preferable, and must be risked in order to have what they wish to deprive us of: our free lives (but I repeat myself).

These "men" are cowards. This is why they make threats against us in the hopes that we will simply do as they say, which is to give up our freedom, to die bloodlessly. The only solution is to stand up to them, to make them come after us and suffer the consequences of doing so, or to leave us alone.

Amit Ghate, who has been all over the Islamic war against freedom of speech (aka the cartoon jihad), provides an example, from Italy, of a particularly hideous "bloodless death": that of the Italian Reform Minister who started off defiantly wearing tee shirts with caricatures of Mohammed on them (buy similar here, HT: Alex Nunez) only to resign from office (apparently under pressure) after another round of riots, in Libya.

In a trend that I suspect will be accelerating, foreign Muslims have succeeded in ousting a politician for espousing legal views. Italian minister Roberto Calderoli has resigned due to protests in Libya! Islamists are learning that they don't even have to wage a war to subjugate the West, simply pointing to their own irrational feelings will be enough. It's just incredibly sad that those of us lucky enough to live in free countries don't seem to value that privilege one little bit....

I agree with Amit, except on one point: The Islamists have "succeeded" at nothing but screaming like spoiled children at indulgent parents. This Islamist "victory", like almost everything else they have "won" in this war, came from the West. As I said about their hotel attacks in Jordan not too long ago.

We already know that what the terrorists want is for us to submit to Islam, dhimmitude, or death. Every demand articulated by terrorists tends to be some tired variant of this theme, usually framed in such a way as to elicit guilt among consumers of the Western media for having "oppressed" the Islamic world for so long. This last is merely a rhetorical tactic designed to sap the will of the various Western electorates to continue fighting. Since we all know what the Islamists want already and reporting their demands as if they are new(s) with every fresh attack merely aids the enemy, our media should, from now on, refrain from discussing terrorist demands as a matter of policy.

By contrast, the barbarism of the terrorists, who know by observing the West that a more civilized way of living exists, and yet choose otherwise, is grossly underreported. Take their parasitism. Without the superior achievements of the civilization they say they despise and hope to eradicate, the terrorists would not: be able to synchronize their explosions, have the entire world know of them almost instantaneously, be able to broadcast the latest lame excuse for what has become merely the last in a long line of similar acts, have explosives in the first place, or have nice, modern hotels as targets. But our news media take the great achievements of the West for granted, making the terrorists seem much more than they really are: Impotent without the aid of Western technology.

One wonders how much more resolve our nation would have were the news media not so busily presenting the demands of terrorists to the voting Western public as if they -- delivered with threats -- were worthy of attention. One wonders how much more forcefully (and quickly) our war could be won were bad reporting not constantly undercutting the moral distinctions between the terrorists and the civilization they would enslave or destroy. One wonders how appealing terrorism would be to disaffected youths in the West if it were presented as the parasitic, unmanly activity it really is.

The key to winning this war is first and foremost to defend freedom of speech, which entails and will further enable the spread of better ideas than those that currently hold sway in the West. This war is solely about Western will. Islam has no power save as the animating force behind an army of zombies, which we can easily defeat.

But we must remember why our civilization is great. Andy Clarkson quotes Leonard Peikoff on this matter:

Civilization depends on reason; freedom means the freedom to think, then act accordingly; the rights of free speech and a free press implement the sovereignty of reason over brute force. If civilized existence is to be possible, the right of the individual to exercise his rational faculty must be inviolable.

The ultimate target of the Ayatollah, as of all mystics, is not a particular "blasphemy," but reason itself, along with its cultural and political expressions: science, the Industrial Revolution, the American Revolution. If the assault succeeds, the result will be an Age of Unreason -- a new Dark Ages.

The Islamists are currently winning with the help of the West, specifically with the help of their active sympatizers in the media and with the silence and inaction of those who will not stand up to them either because of fear or from a failure to appreciate the gravity of the situation. It will be up to the better elements of the West, those of us who see what is at stake and have the courage to make a stand, to carry the day.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added announcements on The Undercurrent and The Sub Report. Added note on my review of The End of Faith.

How to Fight Jihadists

In a word: Ruthlessly.

Wretchard has a fascinating post up over at the Belmont Club which details a successful American campaign against jihadists that took place a century ago. It's worth a full read, but here's a teaser.

Another officer of almost demented courage was Leonard Furlong, who the Moros feared as an almost unearthly being. Furlong actually led a unit of Christian/Moro constabulary men that would go anywhere, any time to take on anybody. One example of his exploits is given below.

Furlong arrived at Bugasan at daylight on the morning of July 9. He had but six rifles in his party. He called to the inhabitants of the house to surrender, and found, not a few Moros, but a gang of 100 armed bandits who surrounded his small force. In one of the most dramatic hand-to-hand combats of the period, Furlong personally killed six of the Moros, and extricated his men without injury to his force. He personally broke a passage through a wall of krismen as point of that compact group of soldiers who battled hand to hand with the odds ten to one against them. ... One of the most striking examples of Furlong's policing activities was his extermination of Kali Pandopatan, the Sultan of Buldung. The Kali had been playing double with the American government, and Furlong, with a dozen Constabulary, had gone to the cotta of the Kali for a conference. Once inside the cotta, he was set upon by more than 400 Moros, armed with barongs. Furlong backed his party into an angle of the walls and was in possession of the field after a terrible hour of slaughter. ...

Perhaps one of Furlong's most characteristic gestures was throwing his hat into the Moro forts he was preparing to assault and wagering that he could get to it before any of his men. It is said Furlong never lost a single one of those bets. In 1911 he was sent to Manila because his superiors feared that he was losing his mind. Furlong shot himself in his quarters.

The main post does not mention one other thing that I wish it had (and I hadn't the time to sift through the 190 comments it already had when I composed this), but General Pershing (for whom a Moslem turns out to be named later in the Belmont Club post), had a no-nonsense way to deal with terrorists that John McCain would be wise to learn about. (But please read the update below.)

In 1911 in the Philippines, our Gen. John J. Pershing arrested several of the most brutal Islamic terrorists of the day. They were found guilty of capital crimes and shot, but not before the bullets used by the firing squad were dipped in pig fat, thus denying them according to the rule of Islam a soft landing in Heaven. Pershing, however, did allow one of the terrorists to escape so that he might report his chums' fate to their superiors.

Our enemy has not changed one bit since those days, except in the sophistication of the weaponry it can obtain from the West. But we have. And if we do not quickly become willing to visit horror upon our enemy, he will do so to us.

-- CAV

Update

2-20-06: A commenter provides a link pertinent to the Bob Tyrrell story on Pershing I passed along. Snopes reports that it can neither substantiate nor rule out Pershing's use of this method of deterring terrorism. It also discusses more of Pershing's dealings with the Moros, including this interesting anecdote.

Col. John J Pershing threatened the mullahs with . . . "splattering of pigs-blood on your houses and families and any who attack us and are killed will be buried in pig-skins." Consequently the mullahs made Pershing an Honorary Chieftan with little if any more trouble in his area of command.

Coming Soon: Thomas the Tiananmen Tank

While savages in one part of the world continue to use the excuse of the publication of some cartoon images (of my blog's mascot of all things) to commit murder and violate property rights, thugs in another part of the world are using a cartoon of their own to put a "smiley face" on what amounts to exactly the same type of behavior.

Via Matt Drudge, I found this story about the latest in Chinese censorship, along with the image shown here.

With their big blue blinking eyes and their quirky personal websites, there is no denying the cuteness of the cartoon cops at the front line of China' battle for control of the internet.

But the role played by Jingjing and Chacha, the animated online icons recently introduced by police in the southern Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen, is entirely serious.

The cartoon couple patrol the city's news and discussion websites to scare off anyone who might be tempted to use online anonymity to break China's laws, says Chen Minli, director of the Shenzhen City Public Security Bureau's Internet Surveillance Centre.

"Now internet users know the police are watching them," Ms Chen says in an interview at the Bureau's gleaming new 28-storey building in central Shenzhen.

How adorable!

And, at least by the metric used by their creator: How effective!

But the no-nonsense Ms Chen and her comrades in the Surveillance Centre are proud of the online enforcement role played by Jingjing and Chacha (whose names are made up of the Chinese characters for "police").

"All around the world there are internet police, but they always operate backstage...." No other internet police have stepped to the front of the stage," she says. "We really feel that this is a historic breakthrough."

Jingjing and Chacha operate by appearing as clickable adverts on local websites and as virtual users of the hugely popular QQ instant messaging system operated by Nasdaq-listed Tencent.

...

Ms Chen says the mere appearance of the icons makes users think twice before posting sensitive messages. When Jingjing and Chacha arrived on local websites, the number of postings that had to be filtered out because of suspect content fell more than 60 per cent.

When the pair send warning messages to websites under investigation for alleged fraud, the sites' operators often immediately shut them down, she says. [bold added]

"No-nonensense"?!?! Let's lick Comrade Chen's combat boots while we report this atrocity, shall we? It's discouraging enough to hear how shoddily the Chinese government treats its own citizens without the Western press protesting only ritualistically before calling some power-hungry bureaucrat "no-nonsense".

But if bureaucrats are known for being power-hungry, they are also known for being dull-witted. I suspect, based on other news about the Great Firewall of China that I have recently encountered, that these adorable little Gestapo members really only warn people that the government is on to their site and that it's time to move elsewhere, so perhaps this story is good news in disguise....

But this is what I found truly appalling. This story also gives us, by accident, a vignette of a little girl, excited about the Internet, with a beast like the "no-nonsense Ms Chen" for a mother.

Ms Chen, a police technology veteran, says inspiration for the personal sites came from her 15-year-old daughter who keeps her up to date on new internet possibilities.

And as Ms. Chen learns of these possibilities, she systematically destroys them.... I wonder, sadly, what will become of her daughter.

But it is the end of the story that takes the cake.

... Ms Chen suggests US officials might want to consider adopting their own Jingjings or Chachas to police Google services following the US company's refusal to share information about its searches with the government.

In any case, she says, overseas critics should not judge China by their standards.

"In my family, if my child does not lay her chopsticks down properly, then I will smack her, but maybe in your family you are too relaxed about such things," Ms Chen says. "Each family has its own rules and countries are the same."

"Too relaxed about such things"? The gall of this control freak is amazing! She dismissed, based on subjectivism, the American respect for man's right to free speech: "Each family has its own rules" while also asserting that what she feels to be better, is. Namely, threatening people for daring to voice opinions beyond the limited scope of what she is willing to consider. And notice the revealing analogy she uses to justify what she does: Her behavior is supposedly like a mother teaching a child proper chopstick etiquette! So whether we respect the right of others to voice their opinions or jail them for doing so is no more important than our choice to eat with chopsticks or a fork?

Man has an inalienable right to free speech, which stems from his right to live, and his nature as a rational animal. Man may have a choice in something incidental like how he lifts food from his plate to his mouth, but he has no choice about his need to think to survive. In the context of a society, freedom of speech is necessary so that men can learn from each other.

What kind of a mother would "smack" a child over her use of chopsticks, but then train her not to think with cute policeman characters? The Financial Times may call her "no-nonsense", but I would call her a comprachica.

What's next in China? Thomas the Tiananmen Tank?

-- CAV

Sneak Preview of The Virtuous Egoist

Heh. This will be my second, uncharacteristically short post in one day. The apocalypse is at hand.

Via Passing Thoughts, I have learned that an excerpt of Tara Smith's upcoming scholarly book, Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist, is available on line. He recommends the PDF version since it has the footnotes. Here's an excerpt of the excerpt:

Much recent discussion in ethics has danced around the edges of egoism, as renewed attention to virtue ethics, eudaimonia, and perfectionism naturally raise questions about the role of self-interest in a good life. Although the ancient Greek conception of ethics that is currently enjoying a revival does not fit stereotypes of egoism, it certainly does not advocate altruism. As Rosalind Hursthouse acknowledges, much virtue ethics portrays morality as a form of enlightened self-interest. Although authors increasingly have defended aspects of egoism (see, for instance, David Schmidtz, Jean Hampton, Neera Badhwar), the overwhelming majority of ethicists remains averse not only to endorsing egoism but even to seriously considering it. Those who do speak on its behalf usually urge that we incorporate discrete elements of egoism, such as self-respect, alongside altruistic obligations. Rather than urge that we replace altruism with egoism, in other words, they seek to reconcile select self-beneficial qualities with the altruism that we all already "know" morality demands. This latter assumption remains ubiquitous. Christine Korsgaard's claim that "...moral conduct by definition is not motivated by self-interest" is typical.

Consequently, the questions raised by these recent developments in moral philosophy have not been adequately pursued. Is eudaimonia a selfish end? What does selfishness actually mean? What sorts of actions does it demand? What are the implications of pursuing eudaimonia for a person's relationships with others? Yet another nascent movement in ethics, perhaps spawned by virtue ethics, also points to a need to confront egoism more squarely: the advocacy of naturalism as the foundation of morality. In the past few years, Philippa Foot, Rosalind Hursthouse, and Berys Gaut have all defended the idea that the bedrock source of proper moral norms rests in needs dictated by human nature. A little earlier, James Wallace's Virtues and Vices (1978) advocated the same basic view. [footnote numbers omitted]

Mike says, "I'm looking forward to reading the entire book, but $80!?" I say, "Gulp!"

-- CAV

Atlas Shrugs in New Orleans

As an Objectivist with connections in New Orleans, how could I not report this one?

Atlas, which was set to be the first parade to roll of the official 2006 Carnival season, has been cancelled.

WDSU Mardi Gras Guide Arthur Hardy said the krewe of Atlas decided not to roll due to its inability to obtain insurance. Stay tuned to WDSU Newschannel 6 for the latest Mardi Gras news, reviews and pictures of the 2006 Carnival season.

I hope this is just an anomaly and that the symbolic start of the recovery of New Orleans from Katrina, its 150th Mardi Gras, otherwise goes very well. And that's not just because my wife and I plan to be there at some point during the festivities!

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 22

Curse of the Moderates

Awhile back, I encountered this excellent Charles Krauthammer column which made the point that much of what passes for "moderation" in the Moslem world and the leftist intelligentsia is not, in fact the attitude of political tolerance which we would hope for.

A true Muslim moderate is one who protests desecrations of all faiths. Those who don't are not moderates but hypocrites, opportunists and agents for the rioters, using merely different means to advance the same goal: to impose upon the West, with its traditions of freedom of speech, a set of taboos that is exclusive to the Islamic faith. These are not defenders of religion, but Muslim supremacists trying to force their dictates upon the liberal West.

And these "moderates" are aided and abetted by Western "moderates" who publish pictures of the Virgin Mary covered with elephant dung, and celebrate the "Piss Christ" (a crucifix sitting in a jar of urine) as art deserving public subsidy, but are seized with a sudden religious sensitivity when the subject is Muhammad.

...

The worldwide riots and burnings are instruments of intimidation, reminders of van Gogh's fate. The Islamic "moderates" are the mob's agents and interpreters, warning us not to do this again. And the Western "moderates" are their terrified collaborators who say: Don't worry, we won't. It's those Danes. We're clean. Spare us. Please.

Want an example? How 'bout Maylaysia's prime minister, Abdullah Badawi:

Abdullah Badawi, seen as promoting a moderate form of Islam in largely Muslim Malaysia, said many Westerners saw Muslims as congenital terrorists.

As he spoke at a conference in Kuala Lumpur, thousands protested outside at cartoons of the Prophet [sic] Muhammad.

...

On Thursday, Mr Abdullah shut indefinitely a Borneo-based paper, the Sarawak Tribune, for reprinting the cartoons.

He described their publication as "insensitive and irresponsible". The paper had apologised for what it called an editorial oversight.

...

They think Osama bin Laden speaks for the religion and its followers," he said, quoted by the Associated Press news agency.

...

"The West should treat Islam the way it wants Islam to treat the West and vice versa. They should accept one another as equals," he said.

So what would "Mister" Abdullah prefer? That the West reciprocate for his shuttering of a newspaper by banning Korans (for their insensitivity to non-Moslems), or that they begin to reciprocate our respect for their freedom of speech by, say, not crying, rioting, and burning things up when we publish cartoons they don't care for. His choice is not encouraging, coming from a "moderate". (And get a load of what some state-controlled Moslem presses publish! HT: The Simplest Thing, and boy, there isn't even a comparison between the Danish cartoons and the vile stuff at that link!)

Blogroll Addition

I have added the very interesting blog of the Software Nerd to my blogroll. He doesn't publish regularly, but when he does, it's very good and very interesting. He focuses mainly on business and technology, and thinks outside the box. Go over and start scrolling. If nothing else, consider his very good advice on passwords. The Software Nerd also took over maintenance of the Objectivist Metablog some time back and has been doing a great job in that role. (HT: Literatrix)

Did China attack an American in America?

In a comment to this post, Software Nerd pointed out an article at Forbes that describes what sounds like an attempt by the Chi-Comms to silence an American critic by attacking him in his own home.

Peter Yuan Li--a key figure in the Falun Gong's technologically sophisticated attempt to undermine the Chinese Communist Party--was brutally attacked and beaten in his home in Duluth, Ga., as Forbes was going to press with its cover story on how the spiritual movement is penetrating the Chinese government's hi-tech censorship. At 11:15 A.M. on Feb. 8, according to the Fulton County Police Department Incident Report, Asian men stormed the house of the Princeton-educated information technology technician, bound and gagged and beat him, before fleeing with two 16-inch Sony laptop computers, Li's wallet and yet unknown material from his files. [bold added]

The article later refers to Li as a "U.S. citizen". If China was indeed behind this attack, it would be consistent with past behavior by Chinese authorities.

This happened well over a week ago and yet this is the first I have heard about this incident. This should have been all over the place by now!

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Removal of three paragraphs from first section and several minor edits.