Jul 14, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Yahoo News:[A] groundbreaking poll, by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, showed only 10 percent of respondents questioned in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan and Lebanon would wish to rebuild their homes under Israeli rule....
"The refugees who didn't choose to return to 1948 lands ... know that life in Israel means Israeli citizenship, Israeli laws, and an Israeli social environment," the center's head, Khalil Shikaki, told The Associated Press.
When Shikaki called a news conference to present his findings, about 200 Palestinian refugee activists stormed his Ramallah office Sunday, smashing furniture, throwing eggs and assaulting Shikaki and some other center staff.
"We are here to announce that our right of return is a sacred right," said a leaflet distributed by the protesters. "We will resist any attempt to sabotage our right of return." [July 14, 2003]
Jul 13, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From BBC News:Iraq has taken its first step towards self-government since the fall of Saddam Hussein with the inaugural meeting of a governing council composed of Iraqi nationals. ...
...Its first decision was to declare a national holiday on 9 April - the day US-led forces overthrew the old regime - and to scrap holidays and festivals linked to the formerly ruling Baath Party...
...Sergio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations special representative in Iraq, described the day as "historic" and said it was an important step in returning sovereignty to the Iraqi people. "Freedom, dignity and security must from now on be taken for granted by all Iraqis," he said, adding that the UN would be "here for you in any way you wish and for as long as you need". ["Iraq moves towards self-rule" July 13, 2003]
Wait a minute--wasn't it the U.N. who voted to keep Saddam in power? Who needs them?
Jul 12, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From David Holcberg of the Ayn Rand Institute:President Bush's pledge to spend $15 billion to combat AIDS in Africa is an outrageous misuse of taxpayers' money. Those who want to help AIDS victims--or any charitable cause at home or abroad-- should do it privately, on their own initiative, with their own money. President Bush, however, has no moral right to force taxpayers to bankroll his "charitable" causes. Thus our government should stop giving away our money and stick to its proper purpose: the protection of our individual rights.
Jul 12, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Scott McConnell at the Ayn Rand Institute:Where are they all?
The placard-waving throngs of former hippies; Jesse Jackson pretentiously speechifying to foreign multitudes; Jimmy Carter pontificating to Larry King--all those peaceniks protesting the deaths of Iraqi civilians?
Where are they now that they are really needed--to support and defend the Iranians rising up to shake off the shackles of dictatorship?
The Iranian people are oppressed by the Mullahs like the Iraqis were oppressed by Saddam Hussein. They have lost their right to free speech, free movement and assembly, freedom of (or from) religion, and the freedom to live their lives by their own freely chosen values, not those of their rulers.
Could it be that these alleged peace protestors were really demonstrating, not for Iraqis and their rights, but against America?
Is that why they are not supporting the Iranian people (or the Venezuelans or Zimbabweans for that matter)--because the U.S. government is (albeit timidly) on the side of these freedom yearning people?
Anyone who truly values individual rights should be cheering and supporting those brave Iranians who want and deserve something very moral and simple: freedom.
Jul 12, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
Related articles:
Reducto Ad Totalitarianism by Robert W. Tracinski
Imagine a society in which an unelected, few people, qualified for power only by their mastery of esoteric terminology and incantations, are able to dictate our everyday lives in the most minute detail--growing rich in the process by siphoning off unearned billions from the nation's economy. Does this sound like life in some dictatorship, like the reign of the theocratic mullahs in Iran? In fact, it is the system that a cabal of trial lawyers is trying to impose here in America.
Jul 12, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the Washington Post:The only conclusion one can draw is that for liberal Democrats, America's strategic interests are not just an irrelevance, but also a deterrent to intervention. This is a perversity born of moral vanity. For liberals, foreign policy is social work. National interest--i.e., national selfishness--is a taint. The only justified interventions, therefore, are those that are morally pristine, namely, those that are uncorrupted by any suggestion of national interest.
Hence the central axiom of left-liberal foreign policy: The use of American force is always wrong, unless deployed in a region of no strategic significance to the United States....
What should be our criteria for military intervention? The answer is simple: strategic and moral necessity. Foreign policy is not social work. Acting for purely humanitarian reasons is wanton and self-indulgent. You don't send U.S. soldiers to die to assuage troubled consciences at home. Their lives should be risked only in defense of their country. [Washington Post , July, 10, 2003]
We're making inroads, though as is evident from the last paragraph (and the rest of his column), Krauthammer still thinks that self-interest is something entirely separate from morality.
