Aug 12, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Edwin A. Locke of the Ayn Rand Institute:For decades liberals have been telling everyone that they should be more race conscious. They have convinced the government and even the Supreme Court to not only allow but to force businesses and universities to select employees and college students according to racial criteria. The unsurprising result has been that everyone has become more racist. The latest consequence of this focus on race is that now blacks are being accused in EEOC cases of being racist towards other blacks based on the particular shade of their blackness--those with lighter skin color considering themselves superior to those with darker skin!
When will all this absurdity stop? Only when people, with the government's blessing, begin to treat people as individuals. What counts is not our skin color but our character. Character is determined not by our pigmentation genes but by the choices we make in life. The only cure for racism is individualism: the doctrine that each individual is a being of self-made soul and is to be judged accordingly, regardless of race, color or nationality.
Aug 12, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
"In Iraq most people don't want separation of church and state," says NYU law professor Noah Feldman, former senior adviser for constitutional law to the occupation authority in Iraq ["Constitution is Next Fight for Free Iraq," NY Sun, August 4, 2003].
Even if it is true, so what?
That people "want" to force their religion on others is no more worthy of respect than that a rapist "wants" to rape; regardless of how many people have such oppressive desires, they have no right to be left free to pursue them. The only reason America shouldn't force religious freedom down the throats of unwilling Iraqis--which it would have every right to do--is that it is not our role to civilize barbarians, and it is not worth sacrificing American lives to such a cause.Rather than promote religious tyranny, America should see its military objectives through and get out of Iraq--outside of maybe a few military bases--with the proviso that we'll be back to topple any future government that should threaten our interests. Outside that, if the Iraqis insist on being savages, they deserve what's coming to them.
Aug 12, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Lately the press has offered several startling examples of horrors perpetrated by modern-day religion. The first is from a review in yesterday's New York Sun of the book American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857 by Sally Denton:In September of 1857, a wagon train passing through Utah was trapped and viciously attacked in one of the most despicable acts of religious fanaticism ever perpetrated on American soil. The travelers were set upon by white men disguised as Indians, and within a matter of minutes approximately 140 men, women, and children were killed in an open area called Mountain Meadows. Young girls begged for mercy and had their throats slit; men were shot execution-style or, in some cases, bludgeoned to death. Their bodies were then stripped of clothing and valuables and left to rot in the open field. The incident, the subject of contentious debate for more than a hundred years, was most likely officially sanctioned by leaders of the Mormon church.
The second example is from a review in the New York Times of the current film The Magdalene Sisters, which is apparently based on reality:
"[B]ad girls" exiled from their families and communities, often after becoming pregnant out of wedlock, were forced to do slave labor in convent laundries that proliferated in Ireland until recently. The existence of these religious labor camps run by the Sisters of the Magdalene Order came to light only in the 1970's with the discovery of the unmarked graves of women who lived there. After the scandal broke, the laundries were closed, the last in 1996. Some 30,000 women are thought to have passed through their gates. Once incarcerated, the women were forced to toil long hours under close guard doing unpaid work that was deemed fitting penance for their sins....Forbidden to talk while on the job, the prisoners were continually harangued by the nuns in charge about their sins and the unlikelihood of salvation. Disobedience was punished with beatings and the shearing of their hair. Although some of these outcasts were eventually reclaimed by family members, others were simply abandoned to spend the rest of their lives behind locked institutional doors.
Aug 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
According to Ira Stoll in today's New York Sun, the Iranian government has reacted to the fall of Iraq with the following program:Budgeting several billion dollars to build a nuclear bomb by the time of the next American presidential inauguration, in January 2005. ...Moving aggressively to expand Iranian influence in Syria by building mosques in Damascus and by providing free and low-cost oil to the Syrians. ...Undermining America in Iraq by working with Saudi Arabia, Syrians, and loyalists to Saddam Hussein.
In addition,
"They were very anxious to get face-to-face time with American officials," [Executive Director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, Henry] Sokolski said, describing the Iranians as "pleading" for him to go to New York to meet with officials at the Iranian mission to the United Nations. He declined. "I think they want to make folks believe they are meeting with Americans all the time, that the dissidents should give up..."
Aug 10, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
Comments Allen Forkum:
From Associated Press: Lieberman: Dean Pulling Dems Too Far Left.
"[Howard Dean] seems to be pulling some of the other candidates back to the old Democratic ways that did not work -- high taxes, big spending, weaknesses on security," [presidential candidate Joe] Lieberman said. "I feel a real responsibility to speak out for the best traditions of the Democratic Party." [...] Dean has dismissed Lieberman's criticism, saying, "I am in the center."
And this New York Post op-ed by Deborah Orin notes shades of Clinton in Dean: Is Dean being honest? Well, define 'honest'.
Aug 9, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
Writes Allen Forkum:
This cartoon is from January 2002 and is in our book, Black & White World. At the time, Mr. Powell was publicly questioning the Bush Administration's detainment policy toward enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan. It was just another example of how his appeasing approach toward our enemies has constantly threatened to undermine the War on Terrorism, which has been and still is being pursued too haltingly. (The only major exception in Powell's behavior was his final, full backing of the Iraq war, for which he gets some credit.) The bad Powell news this week is that he's criticizing Israel for its security fence, as if a fence is the real problem there and not murderous Palestinian terrorists. The good Powell news this week is that he may not serve a second term as Secretary of State. We say good riddance.
