The French Apartheid Millet System

Over at Jewish World Review is an interesting column by Jack Kelly on theFrench Intifada and the de facto division of France into what's left of its moribund self and lawless Moslem enclaves.

Kelly argues that the rioters could well succeed. And in what form would that success be?

Most of the rioters are petty criminals. But others seek de jure recognition of a de facto partition of France that's been under way for some time.

"Some are even calling for areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the millet system of the Ottoman Empire," wrote Amir Taheri, who lives in Paris. "Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs."

A de facto millet system already is in place in parts of France, Taheri noted: "In these areas, all women are obliged to wear the standardized Islamist hijab while most men grow their beards to the lengths prescribed by the sheiks."

Unless the invertebrates in charge can grow spines, France seems poised to become what Spain was before Ferdinand and Isabella, a patchwork of principalities where Moors ruled some communities, Christians others, with constant tension between them.

It seems inconceivable that a civilized Western nation would bargain away to a handful of thugs its democratic principles and sovereignty over much of its territory. But the Islamists may well succeed. For though what the Islamists believe in is vile and reactionary, it is something. The French believe in nothing.

Success for the rioters would come in the form of official recognition of the sovereignty of these Moslem enclaves, which would signal the end of the French Republic and serve as a watershed event in the decline of Western civilization in Europe.

The last two sentences succinctly describe the philosophical cause of the crisis, as well as serve to remind us of how leftist nihilism paves the way for religious fanaticism.

-- CAV

PS: Interesting side note: At MEMRI, there is mention of a Fatwa against rioting by the Union of French Islamic Organizations. (I guess the Moslems have acculturated themselves to at least one French tendency: bureaucracy....) This might sound encouraging, insofar as fatwas go, but then we come to this paragraph:

The leading French Islamist website www.oumma.com [hypertext link removed] posted a counter-opinion in an article titled "The Unbelievable Fatwa," arguing that this fatwa strengthened the belief that [riots] are Islamically motivated, and that it was therefore reinforcing the prejudices against the Muslims, and helping French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

Moslem opposition to rioting would reinforce anti-Islamic prejudice ?!?!?!?! This paragraph is the most succint example I have ever seen of multiculturalism sacrificing the moral sanction of civilized behavior to the notion that someone somewhere might view some non-Western group in an unfavorable light.

Updates

Today: Added PS.

11-11-05: To make a point implicit in my title more explicit, I would point out that the French have basically been practicing a sort of apartheid with their African immigrant population for which I am sure they have gotten a pass, up to now, because they have been "taking care" of them with their comprehensive welfare state. But with socialism being discredited by the hour, how will France puchase the moral sanction of the left? By ceding official control of these enclaves of course!

Multiculturalism is not about equality among races or cultures, nor is it about individual rights. This is why to the multiculturalists, racial segregation is okay so long as it is done for the "right" reason, namely, the eradication of Western civilization, the very civilization that gave us the concepts of individualism and natural rights.

China vs. Text Messaging

Chinese authorities are now clamping down on text messaging.

A circular issued by the Ministry of Public Security, the communist internal political police, stated that it is illegal to send short text messages that can have "massive influence."

Chinese leaders fear text messaging could be used for pro-democracy and anti-communist political activities.

The effort appears aimed at curbing mass communication through cell phones, such as occurred in recent months when large-scale anti-Japanese demonstrations were triggered by widespread text messages.

It is unsurprising that the Chi-comms want to do this, but mind-boggling to imagine how they could succeed.

I find the bit about text messaging and anti-Japanese rioting interesting. The article merely says that text messaging occurred during the anti-Japanese riots and obviously wants the reader to infer causality, making me wonder whether the source for this story is the Chinese government. After all, blaming text messaging for the riots simultaneously whitewashes the Chinese government's likely encouragement of such riots and gives it a noble-sounding excuse for this latest example of censoring electronic media.

Of course, even the notion that China encouraged the rioting -- plausible in many ways -- has its own problems, given China's huge problem with civil disorder.

Whatever is going on over there, it is encouraging that (1) the government feels a need to protect itself from its own people, (2) a billion plus people is a huge number to protect one's regime from, and (3) the government doesn't seem to be doing nearly as well as it would like.

-- CAV

The Kristallnacht of the Altruist Nazis

Via Cox and Forkum, I have learned that an excellent TIA Daily article by Robert Tracinski on the French Intifada is now available online. (It was also picked up by Jewish World Review.)

The standard view of Nazism is that the root of the Nazi atrocities was an excess of certainty and selfishness, which gave the Nazis the confidence to impose their interests by force. In reality, even a cursory examination of Nazi propaganda shows us the opposite. Rather than advocating of rational certainty, the Nazis were dogmatic subjectivists--Hermann Goering famously declared that "two plus two makes five if the Fuhrer wills it" -- which inspired their hatred of the mind and their worship of brute force. (An Italian Fascist would declare that "when I hear the word 'culture,' I release the safety catch on my revolver.") And as for self-interest, the Nazis were thoroughgoing collectivists, who held that the interests of the individual must be ruthlessly sacrificed to the interests of the race. Hitler declared "Du bist nichts, dein Volk ist alles" -- "you are nothing, your race is everything."

But what happens if you think -- as do most academics and those in the mainstream political left -- that certainty and selfishness were the fundamental vices of the Nazis? You will be ready to accept any of the real fundamentals of Nazism -- so long as they are cast in a more skeptical, self-deprecating form.

That is precisely what Europe has done. The Europeans have accepted ideas that derive directly from Nazism -- both in their philosophical fundamentals and in their historical pedigree -- but in a more "politically correct" version.

The ideology of these altruist Nazis is Multiculturalism.

Tracinski and others, most notably Mark Steyn, have been developing the important thesis that multiculturalism is giving militant Islam a huge assist. This is an extremely perceptive and important observation. I regard this article as required reading since currently, it is the Islamofascists who understand this fact better than most Westerners.

The ultimate survival of our civilization depends on most people gaining an understanding on some level of what is wrong with multiculturalism and so rejecting it.

-- CAV

Deification of the Zero

What I am about to say is not a reflection on me, but on terrorists: Ho hum. People have been killed in Allah's name. Again.

It also reflects on the uniformly poor reporting of terrorist events by our news media, which consistently focus on the most non-newsworthy aspects of each terrorist atrocity, while just as consistently ignoring vitally important ones.

Once again, "holy" "men" have convinced a few of their most gullible, superstitious, and perhaps mentally disabled followers to bring about their own deaths, murdering as many other people as possible besides, by bombing three hotels in Jordan all at once, killing at least 57 human beings.

Suicide bombers carried out nearly simultaneous attacks on three U.S.-based hotels in the Jordanian capital late today, killing at least 57 people and wounding more than 115 in what appeared to be an al-Qaida assault on an Arab kingdom with close ties to the United States and a common border with Iraq.

This is not to dismiss the murder and mayhem (and trickery, if it occurred) as unworthy of notice and mourning. Indeed, every one of the innocent lives -- and those who ordered this vile act are in no position to say who is or is not innocent -- lost today is the end of a whole unique universe, of a precious human life. Every single civilian casualty on either side is a direct result of the war against civilization being waged by Islamic fundamentalists. Every such casualty -- and each one in our military -- should be mourned, and should remind us of the fact that we have been given a choice: to live our lives or allow them to take them from us. Every drop of blood has been spilled because of these men, and the flow will not cease until they are rendered unable to continue their activities.

What I discussed in the above paragraph is all that was newsworthy about today's event, aside from the fact that it is yet another reminder that we are at war with brutal, superstitious barbarians who will only kill or be killed, and whom we are still not killing fast enough.

As such a reminder, the news media should strive to convey accurately the horror of this event. They will fail. We will get a sense of the mayhem and the wanton destruction from our news media, but the stories, in the name of the moral agnosticism wrongly termed "objectivity", will fail to convey the proper sense of indignation and moral outrage these atrocities deserve. We will hear from the terrorists about how much more gruesome future atrocities will be, but this will be presented, like the atrocities themselves, as if a meteorological event, and not a cold-blooded mass execution, had occurred. One would think from the coverage that some rogue hurricane had just landed in Amman, and that al Zarqawi (a prime suspect) were merely a weatherman giving us the bad news that this year's hurricane season is going to be worse than usual and that there's nothing anyone can do about it.

Such reporting does the public a major disservice: It causes us to forget that, because other human beings are doing these things, we can do something about them. Impotent terror or, equally dangerous, jaded indifference, is what this kind of reporting fosters, when an angry determination to set things right is what reports from a properly objective brand of journalism would more likely cause in a civilized audience.

The almost always un-newsworthy demands of the terrorists will be dutifully broadcast as if our honoring of them would matter one jot to the kind of reprobate who would devote so much time and energy conspiring with an imaginary friend named "Allah" to blow several hotels up at once. To recount a famous, recent example of such pacifistic appeasement failing to work:

It's a barely kept secret that Mr. Chirac led the opposition to the Iraq war out of fear of how his Muslim population would react. This fear is a big part of why France portrays itself as America's counterweight and why it criticizes Israel at every turn and coddled the terrorist Yasser Arafat right up to his death. This doesn't elicit thanks from Muslim radicals in France. It turns out to project an image of weakness. Unsurprisingly when faced with some unhappiness they believe they can pressure the French state into submission.

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.

Ayn Rand once coined a term, reification of the zero, to describe a fallacy employed in certain philosophical arguments. With apologies to her, I will play on her term to describe the pathetic dependence of terrorism on the willingness of the Western media to shirk -- in the name of "objectivity" -- from truly objective reporting. Terrorist atrocities are routinely whitewashed. The September 11, 2001 attacks are blithely called "tragedies" instead of the atrocities that they are. Terrorist attackers in Iraq are called "insurgents". Ad nauseam. The impotence of terrorism without the West is downplayed.

Evil, impotent men are thus granted by the Western media a larger than life status a lifetime of studying the Koran in a cave -- or deploying in open battle only weapons developed by their benighted civilizations -- could ever afford them. These men are nothing and yet, Wizard of Oz-like, they are made to look greater than they are.

The media are thus guilty of Deification of the Zero. In the process, their bad reporting is making this war far more difficult in many ways than it should be.

-- CAV

Mixed News from Down Under

Events in France continue to demonstrate the prescience of Theodore Dalrymple:

A profoundly alienated population is thus armed with serious firepower; and in conditions of violent social upheaval, such as France is in the habit of experiencing every few decades, it could prove difficult to control.

Yes. Everyone is linking to this three-year-old piece today, and for good reason. If you haven't already read it, do so now, if for no other reason than to understand in the event I slip in the future and call him "The Prophet Theodore Dalrymple."

In the meantime, events in Australia continue to be interesting. Arrests have been made thwarting what officials said would have been a "catastrophic act of terrorism".

Australian police launched fresh raids after officials said they have foiled a "catastrophic act of terrorism" inspired by a radical Islamic cleric with the arrest of 17 suspects earlier in the day.

Federal police said they searched a home in the southwest Sydney suburb of Revesby Tuesday night as part of a sweep that had begun before dawn.

According to one report, a woman and two children were taken from the house and that a second home in a nearby suburb was also raided.

The pre-dawn raids in the two largest cities of Australia, Melbourne and Sydney, involved more than 450 heavily armed officers backed by helicopters in Australia's largest anti-terror operation.

That's the good news. Worrisome is the following news, which I noticed awhile back and then forgot to blog.

Muslim clerics in Sydney and Melbourne - led by radicals Sheik Mohammed Omran and Sheik Abdul Salam Mohammed Zoud - are still preaching hatred against the West, urging followers in Arabic to resist peace and support insurgents [bold added] waging war against Australian soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In open defiance of John Howard's proposed new terror laws [link added] and the Prime Minister's demand that Muslim leaders desist from inflammatory rhetoric, Lakemba cleric Sheik Zoud has used his Friday prayer meetings over the past month to praise Muslim fighters.

"Allah yinsur el-mujaheddin fe-Iraq (God grant victory to the mujaheddin in Iraq)," he repeatedly screamed during a 35-minute Arabic sermon at Lakemba's Haldon Street prayer hall in Sydney's southwest last week.

These clerics are soliciting aid and comfort to enemies of Australia during a time of war. They can and should be jailed (for sedition under Australian law, as far as I can tell). Why haven't they been?

Still, it's better there than in France....

-- CAV

Good News from Latin America

I like to keep an eye on Venezuela's meddlesome leader, Hugo Chavez, also known to his subjects as El Loco. In the process, I have noted with much chagrin that Bush's refusal to just swat that gnat already is allowing him to become influential in his region of Latin America through various means, including his alliance with Fidel Castro, his control of much of the region's oil, and bullying, including incursions into neighboring countries by Venezuelan forces.

Chavez also tends to attempt to rally his people behind him (and tease everyone who knows Bush) by claiming that the United States is about to (do what it ought to have done ages ago and) invade. He often threatens to begin sending his country's oil to China instead of the United States and does, in fact have favorable contracts with that country for selling oil. Most recently, he threatened to give American-made F-16 fighter jets to Cuba or China if the U.S. failed to honor a maintenance contract it had with a previous regime. (Sadly, the government ended up honoring the contract rather than its obligation to simply destroy said jets....)

With our complete failure to stand up to Chavez -- and the looming possibility of Mexico electing an ally of his to the presidency -- it might seem that there is nothing to stem the tide of his influence. Fortunately, it seems that this might be wrong. Despite the usual anti-capitalist slant of the media coverage concerning the recent free trade talks in Argentina, it would seem that Chavez might be premature to claim victory over Bush.

Seldom has news been so distorted against facts. Most of the U.S. media claim that because the 34 states were obstructed from full agreement on a declaration to kick-start free trade by a few holdouts, it's some sort of victory for the chief obstructor, U.S. antagonist Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Just by the numbers, it's a false impression. Only five states at the Organization of American States summit in Mar del Plata withheld signing a statement to restart talks for a Free Trade of the Americas pact, and four of those -- Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay -- did so temporarily on valid concerns about farm subsidies.

...

That leaves just Venezuela obstructing free trade, and on ideological grounds. The real story is that 29 very different states -- making up 90% of the hemisphere's GDP -- endorsed free trade.

Even more encouraging, the summit's most articulate advocates for free trade spontaneously came from Latin American leaders whose nations have already experienced free trade. Among them, Mexico's President Vicente Fox emerged as a star, bluntly warning anti-trade factions they are "out of touch with reality."

Fox should know. Mexico's GDP has nearly doubled and its exports to the U.S. have tripled since the 1994 passage of NAFTA, expanding Mexico's economy to just a hair's breadth below that of Brazil, a country with almost twice Mexico's population.

Central American states south of Mexico aren't stupid, either, and NAFTA's success encouraged them to seek their own free trade pact with the U.S. -- CAFTA. They know how it draws permanent investment and increases business activity across the board, even in industries like coffee not subject to tariffs.

"We did not come here to attend the burial of the FTAA," El Salvador's President Tony Saca defiantly told Chavez at the summit. "Our position is of a total and absolute support of the FTAA. The spirit of integration will prevail."

I love that last quote, coming as it did from the president of tiny El Salvador.

Chavez, that famed fan of Don Quixote, seems to be tilting at windmills himself. Even just the taste of capitalism that some of these countries have had, it seems, has made his oil-financed handouts somewhat less effective as a means of spreading his influence.

This good news does not eliminate our need to get rid of Chavez, although it might buy us time or make the job somewhat easier. Amomg other things, Chavez is thought to want to develop nuclear technology, possibly with Iran's help.

-- CAV

News and Notes: 11-7-05

Had a bit of a hiccough in my normal blogging schedule, so I'm doing my usual Sunday Roundup today. Mainly, I'll focus on followups to my last two posts and a few other interesting items that have caught my eye recently.

But first things first....

Happy Birthday, Mom!

I am happy to say that hurricanes had nothing to do with my interrupted blogging schedule, for a change! The wife and I flew out to Mississippi yesterday to join my brothers in throwing a surprise birthday party for our mother, who has just reached the big [redacted]-O. Since she sometimes stops by here, I had to forgo my normal practice of giving my readers a heads-up before I break my usual posting routine.

The wife and I flew in and had my uncle pick us up. We then had him let us out around the block from her house so we wouldn't all arrive at the same time. By the time Mom saw me, I was sitting in a lawn chair in the back yard with my wife walking over. The look on her face was priceless!

More on Chinese Espionage

Over at Hundreds of Fathoms, Lubber's Line posts a huge roundup on Chinese espionage and general international meddling that will take quite a bit of time just to go through.

According to the FBI and U.S. Immigration, cultural and economic exchange between the United States and China results in about 150,000 Chinese students studying at U.S. Universities and about 700,000 Chinese tourists and business executives visiting the U.S. each year.

Stop by there. He has clearly done an excellent job.

Other Coverage of the European Intifada

At The Stupid Shall Be Punished, Bubblehead recently posted on the rioting in France (and Nebraska football), including a good roundup on submariners and others who commented on the situation.

Andy at the Charlotte Capitalist brings us more info with a post today.

I can't help but note in passing that French obstructionism of American anti-terrorism efforts in the Middle East sure has paid off! Good thing the frogs didn't "enrage" the Islamic world by going to Iraq with us or otherwise giving us a hand....

Great Pictorial

Bothenook worked a pumpkin patch during a recent blogging hiatus and photo-blogged it upon his return. Beautiful shots.

Motorcycles and Activism

Chap and the Gaijin Biker both point out some interesting examples of "motorcycle activism" for lack of a better term.

Over at Chapomatic, some bikers have organized to counterprotest Fred Phelps's group when it makes unwelcome appearances at the funerals of American servicemen. Chap quotes the Ark City Traveler:

There are 15 motorcycle clubs involved, and they plan on going where the protestors go, making sure families are not hurt by them. This usually means surrounding them, providing a human shield, and drowning out the protestors' voices with their motorcycle engines.

"Anytime they go to a soldier's funeral to cause problems, we will be there," Houck said.

Houck said the group gets permission of families and local law enforcement officers before attending.

"We are not here to stop their free speech," Houck said. "We object to them disrupting military funerals and waving vicious signs. We want them to respect soldiers and their families."

Until that happens, the cyclists will also be exercising their freedoms.

Meanwhile, the Gaijin Biker reports that some motorcyclists are defending their freedom to donate organs to the death, so to speak. He quotes a Reason Magazine article:

In the final analysis, not enough people took seat belt laws personally. For the most part, whatever objections they harbored were overcome by force of law and force of habit. By contrast, substantial numbers of motorcyclists have complained loudly, conspicuously, and persistently about helmet laws for more than three decades.

(For the record: I oppose mandatory seat belt and helmet laws, as well as state payment of medical expenses. The sole burden of an individual's foolishness should be borne by that individual.)

I agree with the Gaijin Biker when he says the take-home message of the article is that "Those who value a particular freedom have an obligation to protect it," although I would hasten to add that I found Reason Magazine's analysis of why seat belt laws -- but not motorcycle helmet laws -- so easily made it onto the books in so many states to be shallow.

In the final analysis, not enough people took seat belt laws personally. ... Politicians didn't have to understand their passion to respect it. And therein lies a lesson for the world's busybodies and petty tyrants.

The problem, unsurprisingly missed at Reason, is that people did not take the seat belt laws personally because so many of them do not understand intellectually why the nanny state is dangerous.

If the public appreciated the dangers of having the state make prescriptive law (e.g., the state prescribing objectively bad or arbitrary behavior, the public slowly getting used to the government controlling more and more of their lives, the precedent for the state to use the "public good" as an excuse to do other things like seizing one's home on behalf of a real estate developer, etc., etc.) -- the public would certainly have "taken seat belt laws more personally".

But such an understanding would require one to know (1) what sets off the government as a unique social institution (its monopoly on the retaliatory use of force), (2) why we need government in the first place (to protect individual rights), and (3) what the basis is for individual rights (man's possession of a rational faculty). This information was discounted as irrelevant by the Libertarian Party long ago.

Particular freedoms are parts of a greater whole that is jeopardized every time a do-gooder decides that the state ought to force people to behave in a certain way for any alleged reason.

A Couple of Updates

Don Watkins has announced that the second issue of Axiomatic is now available.

Zach Oakes now has the PSU Objectivist Club up and running, including a nice, new web site.

Blogroll Addition

I have added Four Knots to Nowhere, the blog of fellow Ultraquiet No More contributor MT1(SS), to my blogroll. He beat me to the punch Saturday in breaking the news about the Chinese espionage arrests to our group submarine blog.

-- CAV

Updates

11-8-05: Corrected a typo.

Outnumbered AND Compromised?

Not so long ago, I noted with great concern that we are allowing our navy to shrink rapidly, during a time when China is feverishly building up its own. At the time, there was also a strong possibility that we were going to close a submarine base and a naval shipyard, both in New England, costing our nation part of its submarine-building infrastructure. The good news is that both were spared.

The bad news is that China's espionage efforts in America seem to have paid off handsomely in the realm of naval technology in general and in submarine technology in particular. Via Matt Drudge and Four Knots to Nowhere, Bill Gertz reports the devastating news in the Washington Times.

Four persons arrested in Los Angeles are part of a Chinese intelligence-gathering ring, federal investigators said, and the suspects caused serious compromises for 15 years to major U.S. weapons systems, including submarines and warships.

U.S. intelligence and security officials said the case remains under investigation but that it could prove to be among the most damaging spy cases since the 1985 one of John A. Walker Jr., who passed Navy communication codes to Moscow for 22 years.

...

Key compromises uncovered so far include sensitive data on Aegis battle management systems that are the core of U.S. Navy destroyers and cruisers.

China covertly obtained the Aegis technology and earlier this year deployed its first Aegis warship, code-named Magic Shield, intelligence officials have said.

The Chinese also obtained sensitive data on U.S. submarines, including classified details related to the new Virginia-class [link added] attack submarines.

Officials said based on a preliminary assessment, China now will be able to track U.S. submarines, a compromise that potentially could be devastating if the United States enters a conflict with China in defending Taiwan.

This news comes after recent intelligence estimates had China able to invade Taiwan within the next couple of years. Those estimates, I assume, took into consideration the fact that our submarines were already on a pace to be outnumbered 2:1 within five years, but not that they would necessarily be detectable to these inferior submarines.

This is terrible news, and I've focussed almost entirely on the submarine angle of the story. Read the Gertz story now. We have just been robbed blind by the Chinese. As thoroughtly-integrated into our research infrastructure as Chinese scientists and engineers are, I fear that this is just the tip of the espionage iceberg.

-- CAV

All Riot on the Western Front

Via Instapundit and following links from there is some alarming coverage of the rioting (to use a euphemism for "civil war") that has been going on in Europe. This is all on top of Europe's continuing difficulties with Moslem terrorists. (And if "civil war" is pushing it, "insurgency" might be better. Besides, the media already use that word to describe similar activities by terrorists in Iraq....)

Meryl Yourish first points out that the rioting was foreshadowed over three years ago by anti-Semitist incidents in France.

Three and a half years ago, Christopher Caldwell wrote an essay in the Weekly Standard about the dangers inherent in the suburbs of Paris, which are not quite suburbs. The essay was about French anti-Semitism, including the French "youths'" unremitting attacks on Jews. It is a case, as many people have pointed out, of the canary in the coal mine. The French insisted there was no problem, and so, of course, nothing much was done.

Before elaborating further, she links to the following news story, about the seventh day of rioting in the suburbs of Paris.

Menacing youths smoked cigarettes in doorways Wednesday and hulks of burned cars littered the tough streets of Paris' northeastern suburbs scarred by a week of riots that left residents on edge and sent the government into crisis mode.

In a seventh consecutive night of skirmishes, young people threw rocks at police Wednesday in six suburbs in the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of Paris - about a 40-minute drive from the Eiffel Tower. In one of them, Le Blanc-Mesnil, about a dozen cars burned and curious residents, some in slippers and bathrobes, poured into the streets.

Some said the unrest - sparked by the accidental deaths of two teenagers last week - is an expression of frustration over grinding unemployment and police harassment in the communities, where many North African immigrants live. "It is not going to end. It is going to explode," said an 18-year-old who would only give his name as Amine.

Besides mentioning the occurrence of rioting elsewhere in Europe, Yourish links to another report, saying: "It's worse than I thought." Both Yourish's post and the link I just provided detail stories that are crucial for the public to understand, but which are getting nowhere near the coverage they deserve from traditional media outlets. From this report:

Our mainstream media, in attempts to preserve the Left's chimera of "universal cultural compatibility," hardly write about all this. Nevertheless, for some years now West European city folk and police officers have been familiar with the reality that certain areas of major European cities are no-go areas, especially at night and certainly if you are white or wearing a uniform [bold added]. Three years ago, a French friend who had his car stolen learned that the thieves had parked the car in a particular suburb. When he went to the police he was told that the police did not operate in that neighbourhood and consequently would not be able to retrieve his car. This is Western Europe in the early 21st century.

Nicolas Sarkozy became France's most popular politician by promising to restore law and order in the whole of France, including in the areas abandoned by previous governments. Since Sarkozy became Interior Minister he has insisted on more police presence in Muslim neighbourhoods. This triggered last week's riots in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, when policemen went in to investigate a robbery and two teenagers stupidly got themselves electrocuted while hiding from the police in an electricity sub station. Many French politicians now probably regret that the police had the audacity to investigate a robbery in Clichy. The result of the incident so far has been six consecutive nights of rioting that is now engulfing the entire Paris suburban area and might soon affect other parts of the country. Last night at least 69 vehicles were torched in nine suburbs across the Paris region. Officials say that small, mobile gangs are harassing police, sometimes even shooting at them. The gangs are setting vehicles, police stations and schools on fire throughout the region.

Also well worth reading is Theodore Dalrymple's penetrating analysis of how modern lower-class culture, multiculturalism, and Islam come together to create the mentality necessary for someone to become a suicide bomber. Here is how, as he puts it, "In Britain, ... these two forms of jihad have coalesced in a most murderous fashion."

Muslims who reject the West are therefore engaged in a losing and impossible inner jihad, or struggle, to expunge everything that is not Muslim from their breasts. It can't be done: for their technological and scientific dependence is necessarily also a cultural one. You can't believe in a return to seventh-century Arabia as being all-sufficient for human requirements, and at the same time drive around in a brand-new red Mercedes, as one of the London bombers did shortly before his murderous suicide. An awareness of the contradiction must gnaw in even the dullest fundamentalist brain.

Furthermore, fundamentalists must be sufficiently self-aware to know that they will never be willing to forgo the appurtenances of Western life: the taste for them is too deeply implanted in their souls, too deeply a part of what they are as human beings, ever to be eradicated. It is possible to reject isolated aspects of modernity but not modernity itself. Whether they like it or not, Muslim fundamentalists are modern men—modern men trying, impossibly, to be something else.

They therefore have at least a nagging intimation that their chosen utopia is not really a utopia at all: that deep within themselves there exists something that makes it unachievable and even undesirable. How to persuade themselves and others that their lack of faith, their vacillation, is really the strongest possible faith? What more convincing evidence of faith could there be than to die for its sake? How can a person be really attached or attracted to rap music and cricket and Mercedes cars if he is prepared to blow himself up as a means of destroying the society that produces them? Death will be the end of the illicit attachment that he cannot entirely eliminate from his heart.

The two forms of jihad, the inner and the outer, the greater and the lesser, thus coalesce in one apocalyptic action. By means of suicide bombing, the bombers overcome moral impurities and religious doubts within themselves and, supposedly, strike an external blow for the propagation of the faith.

Our media's poor coverage often verges on siding with the Islamists in the same sense that said members of the "religion of peace" are merely rioting now. I would call the situation in France a civil war, or at least an insurgency. That this -- and events like these -- go unnoticed (or underreported) but for the web and other alternative media outlets is just a small part of why such media outlets are losing credibility.

We are very lucky to have a free Internet in these turbulent times. Let's hope we keep it that way.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: (1) More on the Paris insurgency, including a map of "part of the area affected" can be found here and here. From the first of these:

At least one nation has been born in the last week, that of immigrants who once colloquially referred to themselves as "Arabs" but who now prefer to call themselves "Muslims". While the riots will start to abate at some point, from exhaustion and the onset of cold weather as much as anything else, the sense of identity forged at the barricades will not so easily fade. A new meme has been born which neither Sarkozy's rubber bullets nor de Villepin's appeasement can bring under control.

The only question is whether another nation has been reborn under the events of the last week; a nation once called France. There is in a sense, something magnificent about the stirrings of identity among the Muslims in the Parisian ghettos; all the grander in comparison to the tentativeness, doubt and reflexive abasement of the officials of the Fifth Republic. The riot police, fire department and public order apparatus may have been present in the rioting banlieus, but the Idea of France was conspicuously absent. The Idea of France, not the hodgepodge of welfare benefits, Marxist obscurantism and world-weariness that that is palmed off as sophistication, is what has to present itself as an alternative to the Green Banner of Islam. Otherwise it will be a contest between something and nothing.

(2) From Matt Drudge:

Rioting in French suburbs 'well organized'
Thu Nov 03 2005 14:56:34 ET

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said Thursday that the riots in several Paris suburbs over the previous night were "not spontaneous" but rather "well organized."

"What we saw in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis overnight was not spontaneous, it was perfectly organized. We are looking into by whom and how," Sarkozy told French news channel i-tele.

The interior minister also said the government would not allow "troublemakers, a bunch of hoodlums, think they can do whatever they want" in the country.

A force of 1,000 police were assigned late Thursday to Seine-Saint-Denis, following the previous night of violence which affected about half of the 40 towns in the department, mostly communities of immigrants from Africa, officials said.

The Tree Surgeon's Amendment

Shortly after I blogged on Supreme Court quotas, I received an email from Karl Spence, a San Antonio, Texas-based journalist concerning an effort to pass something called the "Fair Construction Amendment" as a remedy to liberal judicial activism.

While I appreciate the email and the concern shown for our country by Mr. Spence, I have to disagree with him that this is a good idea. Before I explain why, I'll quote the full text of the amendment as it appears at the last link above.

Section 1: The Judiciary of the United States shall not presume to exercise nonjudicial power.

The sense in which this Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation shall be the guide in expounding it. Its provisions are neither to be restricted into insignificance nor extended beyond the natural and obvious meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people at the time of its adoption. Any faults it may contain are to be corrected by amendment as prescribed in Article V, not by usurpation.

Disregard of these principles is cause for impeachment.

Section 2: No one in the United States shall be either subject to or entitled to discrimination in education, employment, housing, or public accommodations on account of race.

The Congress shall have power to enforce this section by appropriate legislation.

Section 3: The provisions of this Constitution’s first article of amendment shall apply to the states as well as to the United States; but in every other respect, they shall be expounded according to the rules set forth in Section 1 of this article.

Section 4: So that the perpetrators of violent crimes may meet with swift and certain retribution, the courts’ effort to protect them in their rights shall not be perverted into permitting any mere technicality to avert or delay their punishment. Rules governing law enforcement shall be so designed as to protect the individual without imposing a disproportionate loss of protection on society.

Section 5: The Congress shall have power to …

This all appears as a sidebar with explanatory notes to its right. Concerning the elipses at the end of this amendment (which at 247 words would already be one of the longer constitutional amendments), the explanatory notes add:

The additional sections are needed to ratify those changes the courts made for us that we should have made for ourselves (e.g., the overthrow of Jim Crow segregation), and -- if the amendment is to have a chance of success -- to give proper constitutional authority to a great deal of what the federal government is now doing (Social Security, Medicare, the Federal Reserve, national parks, disaster relief, etc., etc., etc.). Section 5 addresses that latter challenge. Left open-ended here, it would need to be drafted in such a way as to fill out the powers of Congress to meet the demands of the modern era, but without destroying all limits on federal powers.

For starters, I'm more of an "abolish Social Security altogether" kinda guy than a "write Social Security into the Constitution" kinda guy. But that's not even the main point here....

Let's set aside the fact that violation of one's property rights -- for the sake of funding someone else's retirement in the case of Social Security -- would be written into the document which is supposed to protect those very rights. Let's even set aside the fact that this amendment might have to be quite long to take care of all those "et ceteras" that the Feds are already doing (even though they should not, in many cases).

These problems, nothing to take lightly in and of themselves, are merely symptoms of the fundamental incorrect premise of this proposed amendment, namely that it is even possible to know in adavnce that a law can be unambiguously applied to all future contingencies. I doubt, for example, that anyone during the founding remotely imagined the internet, but I am sure they would include it as part of freedom of speech, to take a simple example of applying an old law to new concretes.

Case of possible ambiguity in point: the entire Constitution. To narrow things down a bit, let's simply consider Section 1 of the the amendment given above. Who has the final say on what "the natural and obvious meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people at the time of ... adoption" of the Constitution is, anyway? "Natural and obvious"? To whom? The courts -- or Congress -- to whom this amendment hands an excuse for exercising its power of impeachment?

And what if Congress is full of liberals who accept some faddish interpretation of what the Founding Fathers -- all dead (and thus, conveniently, silent) last I checked -- meant when the Constitution was written? Did I miss the section about contacting the Founding Fathers with a Ouija Board? This amendment would merely give a different branch of the government the responsibility of resolving any disputes about what the Constitution has to say -- and make that branch able to goof things up. Note that in addition to subordinating the judiciary to Congress, we have failed to achieve one jot of safety from corrupt men who would misread our Constitution. More on that later.

There can be honest disputes about the meaning of any given law, and of its applicability to any given situation. That's a big part of what the courts are for and exactly why they must be difficult to sway by Congress. The solution to leftist judicial activism is to appoint better judges and yes, in clear-cut cases, impeach certain judges. Stay tuned for what criteria should be used. But to dump everything into the Constitution and then demand that the judges not usurp their role is will not solve the fundamental problem, which is this: At some point, human beings will have to apply the Constitution to novel situations, and human beings are fallible.

Incidentally, this is why another bad precedent would be set by such an amendment: The incorporation of so many laws, many of which violate the purpose of our government by abrogating individual rights, into the Constitution is apparently another attempt to escape from the dilemma posed by past failures of the Supreme Court (e.g., not ruling that social security is unconstitutional in the first place) by demanding that everything be written into the Constitution. (And if not everything, what? Things that contradict the Constitution? Who decides that? The Supreme Court? What if Congress simply impeaches them all and tries again?) To have to add every new law to the Constitution would clearly either hamstring our government and then probably cause many to want an easier way to amend it. Not good. We made it hard to amend the fundamental law of our land for a reason. And the Constitution is painted with broad strokes for a reason, too. At least we had a shot at having social security declared unconstitutional. Actually, we still do.

This amendment does nothing but lop off one of the three branches of the government, the judicial branch, and simply graft it back onto the legislative. It would weaken our system of checks and balances and then, after doing so, leave us open to the whims of a bunch of "legislative activists" who would see to it that the courts rubber stamp whatever they want.

All this brings Tara Smith's outstanding article in defense of pro-individual rights judicial activism to mind, particularly the following two paragraphs.

The charge of "judicial activism" typically condemns proper activity on the part of judges along with improper activity. It has become dangerously commonplace to equate a judge's support for overturning a law with pernicious activism. Prevailing wisdom holds that we can identify "activists" simply by counting up the number of times a judge rules against existing laws or government practices. Notice that by that logic, the only way for a judge to avoid overstepping his authority is to engage in no activity--to simply rubberstamp whatever the legislature and other agencies of government serve up. What, by this reasoning, is the point of having a Supreme Court? Some laws should be struck down. Because the United States is a constitutional republic, we are all bound--private citizens and government alike--to abide by the Constitution. It is precisely the role of the judiciary to strike down laws and prohibit government actions that fail to do so. Judges who so rule are acting responsibly and fulfilling their function.

Laws are necessarily written in broad terms, designed to govern an array of cases that are similar in principle but different in particulars. Judicial rulings are needed when the proper application of those laws, in a specific case, is not transparent. The logical application of a Constitutional provision to novel circumstances is not, therefore, a case of creating new rules ex nihilo. Rather, it is exactly what we need judges to often do. While Article I, for instance, provides for the common defense and the specific maintenance of an army and navy, courts have not been activist dictators by also allowing an air force. While the First Amendment protects freedom of "speech" and of "the press," courts have not brazenly "legislated" by treating written letters as also protected.

The law is an invention of man and as such, it must be actively enforced, and laws must be actively applied to new situations not necessarily imagined when they were written. Both of these activities require human beings to apply the conceptual framework of a given la law to the concrete situation at hand.

The Fair Construction Amendment is, in my estimation, an attempt to circumvent the necessity of human beings thinking about the law in conceptual terms. But this task is inescapable and this particular attempt to avoid it will lead to any of a number of disastrous consequences, including (1) a compromise of our system of checks and balances due to the loss of our independent judiciary, (2) a lengthy, self-contradictory Constitution that fails to protect individual rights, and (3) a nation of (Congress)men and not laws, the exact opposite of the goal of our Founding Fathers, who risked their lives to throw off the yoke of tyranny.

The integrity of our law depends on a quality judiciary, but until better, pro-freedom ideas are accepted much more broadly by the public than they are now, we will continue electing officials incapable of choosing good judges. The problem lies ultimately with us, the people. We can escape the need to have better judges apply judicial principles to questions of law no more than we can legislate away the need to earn a living. That's part of what "a republic, if you can keep it" means. Government fiat (even in the form of a constitutional amendment) cannot substitute for whatever mental effort it is meant to replace.

Lousy judges are not the problem. They are only a symptom.

-- CAV

Life in GVHT

That would be "Gus Van Horn Time".

My wife is in Chicago until Thursday (meaning, among other things, that I'm cooking gumbo at the moment and plan to smoke a cigar some time in the next couple of days). I had to get a presentation ready for today that took up a big chunk of my weekend. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow at 8:00 am.

So I decided not to change my watch or reset any of the clocks at home to reflect the recent change back to standard time. Why wake up early two days in a row, depriving oneself of the joy of an extra hour's slumber? I decided to save that for Thursday morning.

It's been a long day, and one with much less web browsing than has been usual, so this will be one of those rambling, "random thoughts" type of posts.

Caveat Emptor

I am tempted to start a recurring feature of my blog, like the "Idiot Bumper Sticker" series, but I want to do more than vent here. Besides, I decided to go with "Gus Van Horn" and not the other initial candidate for a pen name, "Sir Bitch-a-Lot". ("Good going, Gus!" you might be thinking. "You've just handed your detractors a devastating nickname." To which I would reply: "No one I know personally does a better job of coming up with nicknames than I do. At least if I do it, the nickname will do me some justice. Besides, 'Sir Bitch-a-Lot' has a certain ring to it. Why let some boob paste me with something lackluster?" To which you'd reply: "Oh yeah!")

But I am not Sir Bitch-a-Lot, so there will be no recurring feature -- though this past week has sorely tempted me to institute it -- called "Gus Van Horn's Laws of Commerce". The general theme of such Murphy-esque laws would go something along the lines of, "No matter how much 'caveating' ole 'emptor' Gus does, the business he patronizes will find some way to screw him anyway."

Like this week. On separate occasions over the span of five days, my (wannabe former) pharmacy: (1) Didn't have an order filled on time that I'd called in three days before. (Justice demands that I do note that my physician gets credit for a crucial assist here.) (2) Gave me the wrong medication. (3) Failed to tell me that the brand-name medication, for which my physician (Yes, the one who helped me get the late refill....) gave me a coupon to cover the co-pay, was no longer covered at all by my insurance. The end result of this was that I was confronted with a bill for $324.00 for a tetracycline derivative! I laughed and told them I'd come back to pick up the generic version for $10.00 when they straightened everything out. Someone competent called me from there the next morning and cleaned up after her co-workers.

Of the three, it's item (2) that really bothers me. I wish I had noted exactly what medication I got instead of the antibiotic for adult acne I was supposed to get. That could have merited (but would have failed to get anyway) some kind of a 'lanche.

Remember: "No matter how much 'caveating' ole 'emptor' Gus does, the business he patronizes will find some way to screw him anyway."

Knowing this, I am in the habit of spelling out my very common, white-bread, (actual) surname when coming to pick up my prescription. I then -- except this once -- spell out my first name, even though it is unusual enough that people both always remember it and crack jokes about it at my expense. Since I go about using my middle name, some even will start calling me by this, my first name, rather than what they used to call me. Fine. Whatever waxes your lance.

Anyway, I spell out my last name and, misreading the look I got from the druggist for comprehension, decide not to spell out my first name.

Guess what? And this is where all by buds over at Ultraquiet No More decide I can't possibly ever have been a submarine officer. I didn't take the simple expedient of glancing over what she handed me. No. I completely brainfarted and even chalked up the $30.00 they charged me to my having probably missed a change in my prescription coverage. I'd call about it tomorrow.

But upon getting home, I did look at the pill bottle and saw -- yes -- a totally different first name and, of course, a completely different medication. To top it all off, my name and the first name on the bottle sound about as much alike as "ass" and 'hole in the ground", including to within the limits of poetic license, the number of syllables in each.

Incensed in addition by my realization that the round trip back to straighten everything out was going to cut into my blogging time, I returned. I retrieved my prescription, the $20.00 overcharge, and the following life lessons: (1) Always spell out both names at the drug store. (2) Always verify -- preferably before you leave the store -- that your name is on the bottle. (3) You could get killed by taking the wrong medication. (I leave empirical verification of that last as an exercise for the reader, specifically the reader who called me a "weird heretic" or words to that effect awhile back.)

Item (3) should get your attention. No need to thank me. Just keep stopping by!

Two Three Quotes Funny in Juxtaposition

So the other day, I saw the following quote from Rush Limbaugh:

I love being a conservative. We conservatives are proud of our philosophy. Unlike our liberal friends, who are constantly looking for new words to conceal their true beliefs and are in a perpetual state of reinvention, we conservatives are unapologetic about our ideals.

When I first heard this, I immediately thought of the following Ann Coulter quote from Slander: Liberal Lies about the American Right:

Considering the invective constantly being heaped on the "religious right", it is probably not surprising that few people identify themselves as members. "Religious right" is always something somebody else is, like "son of a bitch". A LexisNexis search of the phrase "religious right" mostly turns up lots of people denying that they belong to it. This could be because there is no such thing as the "religious right". (177)

So I decided to blog it today. And then I remembered the following from Jonathan Carson.

How else can we explain what otherwise appears to be a paranoid fear of an establishment of Christianity despite the near total lack of advocates of a state church?

Not calling a spade does not mean that it isn't a spade....

Yes. It was good!

Took a break in the middle of writing the above to enjoy my gumbo. That commenter said it best: "Cher, Dat do sound soo good!"

Good stuff! Why my wife lets some bad shrimp from her childhood get in the way of enjoying this stuff is beyond me!

OK. It's now 1:00 a.m. GVHT. I may post again if I think I can keep it short. Or I may not.

-- CAV

Updates

4-20-06: Added hypertext anchors.

Osama Has Mask Ripped Off

Or at least we have less to fear from the contents of whatever he's carrying around today....

Just a quick one today unless the finishing touches on my presentation take a lot less time than they normally do....

According to the Wall Street Journal, there is no factual basis for fearing that Islamofascist terrorists will get their hands on the bomb any time soon.

Let's walk back the cat, as they say in intelligence circles. The foundation of all main nuclear suitcase stories is a string of interviews given by Gen. Lebed in 1997. Lebed told a visiting congressional delegation in June 1997 that the Kremlin was concerned that its arsenal of 100 suitcase-size nuclear bombs would find their way to Chechen rebels or other Islamic terrorists. He said that he had tried to account for all 100 but could find only 48. That meant 52 were missing. He said the bombs would fit "in a 60-by-40-by-20 centimeter case"--in inches, roughly 24-by-16-by-8--and would be "an ideal weapon for nuclear terror. The warhead is activated by one person and easy to transport." It would later emerge that none of these statements were true.

The article then goes about debunking the suitcase bomb myth and describing why it will be so hard for terrorists to get the bomb.

Fatwas are not enough. There are only three ways for al Qaeda to realize its atomic dreams: buy nuclear weapons, steal them or make them. Each approach is virtually impossible. Buying the bomb has not worked out well for al Qaeda. The terror organization has tried and, according to detainees, been scammed repeatedly. In Sudan's decrepit capital of Khartoum, an al Qaeda operative paid $1.5 million for a three-foot-long metal canister with South African markings. Allegedly it was uranium from South Africa's recently decommissioned nuclear program. According to Jamal al-Fadl, an al Qaeda leader later detained by U.S. forces, bin Laden ordered that it be tested in a safe house in Cyprus. It was indeed radioactive, but not of sufficient quality to be weapons-grade. One American intelligence analyst said that he believed the material was taken from the innards of an X-ray machine. It is not clear what it actually was, but the canister was ultimately discarded by al Qaeda.

This is a really good article, except for one point. Read it all.

The one deficiency? There is a fourth way for the terrorists to get a bomb: By obtaining it from Iran, North Korea, or some other state sponsor. Too bad we're still chatting with Iran and hoping that North Korea will deign to join us in six-party talks. At least on the publicly-visible side, we seem not to be taking either threat seriously enough.

We can heave a sigh or relief about the so-called suitcase nukes, but the cloud outlined in that bit of silver is that we'd better figure out a better way to monitor container shipping. Were I a terrorist with an Iranian nuke, this would seem the best way to get a nuke over here.

-- CAV

PS: The author of the article, Richard Miniter, is author of Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror. Looks interesting. perhaps I'll get a copy.

News and Notes: 10-30-05

The Sweepers Wore Sox

I determined empirically that my guess last week that the World Series could easily go to seven games was off by only three games! At least all the games were close....

It was still fun seeing the 'stros in the World Series, and there was no shame in their losing to the White Sox.

Blogiversaries

This blog turned one on the 25th. I thank all the well-wishers who left comments here or on their own blogs to mark the occasion.

Fellow member of Ultraquiet No More, Alex Nunez, got into the blogging game a mere two days before I did. Be sure to stop by and wish him a happy first blogiversary if you haven't already done so.

Robert Spencer has been keeping tabs on terrorists for two years now over at Jihad Watch. We all owe him a great deal of gratitude for keeping an eye on developments pertaining to terrorism.

At Found on the Web

They liked the (anti) Che Guevara tee-shirt I pointed out the other day, but also noticed that the same company sells some Ann Coulter shirts I don't particularly care for, either.

Bloggers vs. Miers

I had heard about this list of bloggers who "went on the record" one way or the other about the Miers nomination, but never signed on. That didn't stop me from ending up on the list, though. In any case, I think this informal poll (about 70% against, 15% for, and 15% neutral) played a role (as a measure of public sentiment doubtless known to the administration) in stopping this mistake in its tracks, so I'm glad the 'bots found me/someone took the trouble to put me there. In the latter case, thanks, whoever you are!

Blogroll Additions

I've added Eternal Vigilance, the blog of Adam, who often comments here, to my blog roll. Judging by this post, he may find the previous item interesting. (Although I think he gives short shrift to cartoons.)

Also, I have added Dithyramb, the blog of fellow Ayn Rand fan and self-described "aspiring swashbuckling gentleman philosopher of sorts", Karl Mertens. Today, he reminds us of the upcoming 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot.

New: Humor Section in Sidebar

Yesterday, I noted three favorite humor sites. Today, I'll recommend another that I am sure I will visit regularly: Save the Humans. I first found this site during lunch long ago on Martin Lindeskog's blog, but it is, oddly enough, blocked at work, so I forgot about it until today. Proprietor Jason Roth also posts the odd editorial now and then. I especially liked "Keep Your Values to Yourself".

I have added all four humor sites to the left sidebar for everyone's amusement.

Amit Ghate Columns

Just as I was wondering whether Amit Ghate would be posting again at Thrutch, I learned via the Charlotte Capitalist that he's been busy writing columns for Capitalist Magazine. Andy likes the one about the Greeks. I was partial to the one about Ward "Cherokee" Churchill. Good stuff!

Reading Recommendations

Andy Clarkson also has a list of book recommendations concerning the history of ideas.

Coming Soon: Polls and Crass Commercialism

(And, sooner or later, a favicon....)

A couple of readers have asked me whether I have a Yahoo! wish list or use Paypal. The answers are now: yes and yes. This weekend has been too busy to get them completely finished, though. I'll probably have everything ready and tested by next week. When I do, I'll mention where they are.

I blog for enjoyment and to practice writing and so have no plans to actively solicit donations. But I do appreciate being asked those questions and wouldn't want to get in the way of such gestures of appreciation in the future!

I'm contemplating several other changes for the blog and may use polling scripts to decide on whether to implement them, but I'll ask about one change in particular now: Does anyone who normally visits my site actually use the links on the left side of the page excluding the blogroll. I am thinking of moving these elsewhere and allocating that entire sidebar to blogs.

And, while I'm at it, I welcome suggestions for other improvements from the peanut gallery.

Comments or email are fine, though comments might allow others to see whether anyone else has already thought of a potential suggestion.

-- CAV

Another Good Humor Site

I'm stuck getting a presentation ready this weekend, which means I'm sitting in front of the computer a lot. Lucky you!

If you like The Onion and McSweeney's, you'll love Landover Baptist!

At least this one is new to me, and most of my readers will probably also like it. I stumbled across a story (about -- how shall I put it -- "Jar Jar Binks doll" abuse) during an internet search. That was pretty funny, so I looked around the site a little bit.

Even better was this Q & A by Brother Harry Hardwick:

Q: If you could sell your soul to Satan, what would you want for it?

A: Dear Doomed, Inquisitive One,

I cannot agree with the others who have replied. With all due respect to *****, I think a doughnut is shooting a bit too low. In response to *****, I certainly wouldn't want to be Satan. I'm more of a winter person than a summer person. I have bad reactions to heat. And even though the climate in Hell is a dry heat (Humidity 0%), I would still find it unpleasant. Regarding *****'s answer, I certainly wouldn't want to be God. The sight of blood always makes me rather squeamish, and I find killing even bugs unpleasant. I cannot fathom slaughtering all the people God has over the years. I'm not criticizing Him, mind you -- to each His own, but striking down thousands upon thousands of people with plagues and pestilence just isn't my cup of tea.

The price tag for my soul would be "everything I would get from God as a saved Christian who followed all His commandments." That way, I could go to Heaven without having to sort through the myriad of seemingly unconscionable and inconsistent edicts to figure out what conduct is appropriate. I suppose if I'm in Heaven for eternity, my soul would be with me, but your question didn't say Satan has to take possession of my soul, just that he would buy it. So my request would essentially involve a deal whereby he would own it and I would lease it.

Praying all recognize that if the promise of eternal bliss were guaranteed without following the incomprehensible rules of the Good Book, religion as we know it would disappear,

And don't forget to take this quiz before you leave!

OK. Back to work.

-- CAV

On Supreme Court Quotas

Although I disagree with many of the points made by Rush Limbaugh in this column on the debate over the Harriet Miers nomination, I agree with his larger point: that most substantive policy debate in American politics today is occurring among those lumped together as "conservatives". For example, with so many Senate Democrats predictably voting against anyone Bush nominates for the profound reason that Bush nominated him, that party has sidelined itself from any serious discussion over who should replace Justice O'Connor. (Although some conservatives, like Hugh Hewitt, would have the entire Republican side of the Senate sideline itself. To him, "up-or-down" apparently means "rubber-stamp" and bare competence is less important than making sure that "Justice Sandra Day O'Connor will [not] cast one of her last votes on the most important abortion-rights case in a few years.")

Many blacks, who have historically voted monolithically for Democrats, have begun to feel that they have been "taken for granted" on the basis of their dependable voting. This is a species of the same problem now faced by their party at the national level: When one abandons principles and a thoughtful consideration of evidence to vote reflexively instead, one's power as a voter vanishes. Your supposed friends stop worrying about what you want and your enemies know never to start caring about what you want. And guess what you won't get?

I bring up Democrats and voting because major components of that coalition are women and minorities who reliably vote for Democrats, but are not seeing their interests furthered in the process. Assuming for the sake of argument that the Democratic agenda represents what is best for their most reliable voters, women are supporting a party that has very little power at the national level and this would go for blacks too, except that their reward for supporting the same party close to 90% of the time has already been described.

But what the Democrats say is good for women and blacks and what really is good for women and blacks are not necessarily the same thing anyway. (Fickle voting would have been a way to hold the party's feet to the fire, but it's too late for that now.) Case in point: The idea that only a member of a given demographic can represent other members of that demographic.

This idea gets taken apart today in, of all places, the Los Angeles Times, in a column against Supreme Court quotas for women and minorities.

Last summer, legal commentator Dahlia Lithwick provided a classic example of the "women think differently" argument in the New York Times. A female judge, she wrote, shows "empathy" to victims -- above all, to female victims. A properly sensitive female justice, confronting a constitutional challenge to, say, the 1994 Violence Against Women Act (which made "gender-motivated violence" a federal offense), would uphold the act because it sought to protect female victims of violence.

The fact that the law was patently unconstitutional -- exceeding as it did Congress' powers under the commerce clause -- would not stand in the way of the female justice's mission of helping the weak and oppressed. But empathy for victims, while a wonderful trait in ordinary human affairs, should not influence constitutional decision making. Judging requires the separation of emotions from logical thought.

A serious constitutional analyst does not ask: Is this a sympathetic victim? Rather, he (or she) asks: Is there a constitutional basis for this governmental assertion of power? One may have empathy for a plaintiff and still be compelled to rule against him. Any other approach contains disturbing implications. If female judges are really more likely than men to be influenced by their emotional sympathies, then the outcome of a case may hinge on whether a female or a male judge is hearing it -- an unacceptable proposition in a country that believes in the rule of law.

This reminds me of a discussion I was having with my wife before Bush ever nominated Miers, but when the smart money had him playing dumb at the quota table. My wife thought there was some merit to having a woman on the court. I countered with, "OK. Me or a 'pro-life' woman? It's the ideas a person holds that count."

Protection of individual rights. That's what our government should be doing. Bloc voting does not do this. Nor do quotas. Voter and officeholder alike must be committed not to a tribe, but to the idea that every individual has the same rights and that our government must protect them.

-- CAV

PS: Memo to Susan Estrich: This column may have been written by a woman, but I don't think that's why the Times used it.

Interesting "Anti-Anti" Column

Dennis Prager takes a look at a rhetorical tactic used by the left in a column I encountered over at Jewish World Review today: the negative characterization of those who disagree with their views on any given issue. For example:

Anti-education: Those who object to the monopoly that teachers' unions have on public education and to their politicization of the school curricula are labeled "anti-education." Of course, the irony is that if you love education, you must oppose the teachers' unions.

(Interestingly, and this is more important than it might seem, Prager did not say, "Those who favor a wholly private educational sector.") This is something I noticed years ago and exploited rhetorically in a column, only to have it yanked out by a liberal editor....

Near the end of his essay, Prager correctly points out the fact that this tactic is a two-edged rhetorical sword:

The "anti" arguments are effective. Conservatives have to spend half their time explaining that they are not bad people before they can be heard. But the Left has paid a great price. Because they have come to rely so heavily on one-word dismissals of their opponents, they have few arguments.

I would agree with Prager that this tactic is no substitute for an argument, but would disagree with him that there are "few arguments" on what he calls "the left", mainly because his definition of "the left" is so much broader than it is for most commentators. In fact, by his lights, I might qualify as a "leftist"!

I have contrasted Judeo-Christian values only with leftist values: secularism, liberalism, socialism, humanism, environmentalism.

My regular readers know that from the above list, I advocate only secularism. In fact, I advocate the rise of a secular right in politics, so I am particularly wary of Prager's tendency to imply that secularism is, like socialism, a wholly discredited left-wing idea.

And interestingly, this leads me to note one variant of the "anti-" tactic that I have seen frequently used by the religious right. Those of us who do not believe in God are called atheists. That compound word arises from the Greek as follows: "from a- 'without' + theos 'a god'". I do not quarrel with the need for the term, but with the common practice among religionists like Prager to imply that atheists are "denying the existence of God". We, in fact, do no such thing. It is those who believe in God who are making an assertion and face the burden of proof. Using the term "atheist" in this way to essentially call someone like me an "anti-theist" is, as Dennis Prager might put it, a one-word dismissal, and not an argument.

In truth, there are "anti-" argument substitutes being used by some on both the left and the right. The lesson learned here is that the pot does not become any whiter by calling the kettle black. Given Prager's general intellectual "religious right vs. them" stand, this otherwise decent essay is seen, in that context, as yet another example of Prager pretending that there is no alternative to what he only half-correctly calls "Judaeo-Christian values".

But Prager's general point, that positive arguments are needed in the public debate is well-taken. A general theme in Ayn Rand's writing that too many miss is that she fought fiercely for her values. That many fail to see this fact is partly understandable: Ayn Rand was busily defending her values (e.g., capitalism) from those who would destroy them (e.g., the environmentalists). To many who encounter her, she seems at first merely to be "anti-communist" or "anti-theocracy", for example. But Ayn Rand herself often pointed out that it is not enough merely to oppose a dangerous intellectual trend: One must offer a positive alternative, and so she did.

The interesting question for Prager, then is the following: If he sees the need to make positive arguments for one's positions, why do so many of his columns focus on the intellectual vacuum of what he calls "the left" before offering -- with little or no supporting arguments-- his "Judaeo-Christian values" to fill that void?

-- CAV

Hurricane Fidel Still Lingers

Wow! This has been a tough hurricane season! It seems like ages ago that I reported speculation that Hurricane Dennis could cause political instability in Cuba....

In any case, Cuba has, after being ravaged by Wilma, accepted, for the first time ever, an offer by the U.S. for aid.

Washington has routinely offered humanitarian relief for hurricanes and other disasters in Cuba, and Cuban leader Fidel Castro himself has routinely turned the offers down. After Hurricane Dennis pummeled the island in July, Castro expressed gratitude for Washington's offer of $50,000 in aid but rejected it.

Given that some from the Babalu Blog expressed concern (excerpted here) after Dennis that Castro would merely confiscate relief supplies, I wonder whether this acceptance of aid will do the Cuban people any good.

What I said last time stands:

Hoping for Castro's downfall in this context is hardly minimizing the tragedy of the hurricane strike. The other day, I thought of the hurricane striking Cuba and realized that the damage would still not surpass what Fidel Castro has already done to that island and its people during decades of despotism. What's worse is that in addition -- and in the meantime -- Castro will act to compound the tragedy.

Too bad the real disaster is still pummeling Cuba.

-- CAV

PS: Val Prieto at Babalu Blog finds this change "a bit enigmatic". So do I. I wonder if Castro hopes to return the favor some time by foisting his army of poorly-trained doctors on us in return after some future disaster.

Get Up to Speed on Che

There's a rather lengthy article about Che Guevara you might want to read through over at Capitalism Magazine. A few brief excerpts should show you why I like it.

[This shirt can be purchased here.]

On the importance of the judiciary, Che intoned:

"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary," [Lewis] Carroll would have heard from the chief executioner, named Ernesto "Che" Guevara. "These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredon (The Wall)!"

"Pure hate", eh? Isn't there some stupid lefty bumper sticker that says, "Hatred is not a family value." Well, then, hippie, why is your daughter running around in a Che tee shirt?

Or watching The Motorcycle Diaries, which somehow failed to mention the following heart-warming passage:

Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!

In addition to noting Che's bloodthirstiness, the article examines the following: the number of political executions he ordered or performed (which put Nazi Germany to shame), his torture methods (which a few people at Amnesty International could stand to familiarize themselves with) , his ineptitude in battle, and his writing style, whose description I liked:

As a professional duty I tortured myself with Che Guevara's writings. I finished glassy-eyed, dazed, almost catatonic. Nothing written by a first-year philosophy major (or a Total Quality Management guru) could be more banal, jargon-ridden, depressing or idiotic.

The author, Humberto Fontova, then provides three examples. He knows of which he speaks.

Some aspects of the writing style of this article, like several examples of dated slang, I found distracting, but it is overall an excellent and badly-needed debunking of someone whose pop culture status is possible only because pop culture is so thoroughly saturated with Marxism.

-- CAV

Ecoterrorists Shift Tactics

At RealClear Politics is an article that should be read in full. It describes a recent change in tactics on the part of animal "rights" activists. The new tactic? Terrorism aimed at businessmen who aid research involving animals.

Animal-rights fanatics have figured out that you beat medical research that uses animals not by going after the researchers, but by going after those who do business with the researchers. They cow Wall Street not by flying in to buildings, but by trashing members' clubs.

Here is a condensed list, from the article, of the terrorist attacks that leftist fanatics employed to keep Life Sciences Research, a company that tests drugs on animals, from being listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

(1) "Anonymous thugs vandalized [a company lawyer's] house, smashed his car's windshield and made nasty phone calls to his home in the middle of the night."

(2) Skip Boruchin, a trader who still does business with the firm has had his yard painted with epithets (e.g., "murderer") and has been libeled as a child pornographer online.

(3) "[A] website instructed people to send sex toys to [the same trader's] 90-something mother at an assisted-living home. Another website listed the names, phone numbers and Social Security numbers of 19 neighbors, and threatened to publicize information about their credit cards and medical history."

In addition to all that peace and love, here are acouple more interesting tidbits.

(1) Another company, Chiron, had its offices in California bombed in 2003, including a second blast intended to injure first-responders.

(2) In testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Jerry Vlasak, spokesman for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, dismissed the intimidation of Boruchin and others as "getting a little spray paint on the wall." Furthermore, he defended the notion of assassinating medical researchers: "[For] people who are hurting animals and who will not stop when told to stop, [murder would be a] morally justifiable solution."

Support for terrorism on the left goes beyond just celebrating our 2000th casualty in Iraq. In fact, some on the left are terrorists.

-- CAV