There is a notorious saying in Australia: "You have to cut down the tall poppies." In other words, anyone who dares to poke his head above the crowd must be attacked, denigrated, and brought down to the common level. I don't know whether this "Tall Poppy Syndrome," as it is called, is really typical of Australian culture, but it is a widespread trend in American culture -- and Martha Stewart has long been one of its favorite targets. [...] Stewart's lawyers suggest she is being targeted because she is a successful woman in a "man's world." But ask Bill Gates what kind of welcome a successful man can expect today. In fact, both are the target of a deeper hatred.

The basis for this hatred is not mere envy, but a moral code that makes that ugly emotion seem legitimate: the morality of altruism. We have been told for centuries that the weak, the incompetent, the most down-and-out bums on the street are the most worthy objects of our moral concern—while the highest achievers are at best the bum's servants, at worst his exploiters. The result is an upside-down morality, a code in which the better you are, the worse you are. The more you achieve, the more you are hated.

This hatred of the good is not merely ugly; it is destructive. A culture that attacks its highest achievers will mow down its tall poppies -- and end up with nothing but weeds.

If the average person has little knowledge of how a business works -- of how it is run, what it does, and what is required to run it successfully -- then it is easy for the left to smear business leaders as "parasites" who get rich by exploiting the "little guy." How are people to know any better, if they know nothing of the history of great business leaders; if they know nothing of the structure of a corporation; if they know nothing of the innovation, unwavering focus, and long-range thinking necessary to create and maintain a successful enterprise? The result is that people act as if they can ignore the history and origins of a great American corporation, like Microsoft or Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and treat it as if it just bloomed into existence as a fluke. And thus, the effort and virtue needed to create such a business seems, to them, just as vague and substanceless as the claims that insider trading is a terrible crime. The two ideas are equally devoid of substance and thus hold equal weight in people's minds.

Martha Stewart was investigated for the "crime" of insider trading and later convicted of obstructing justice for lying to authorities during the investigation. But the questions no one is asking are: Should Martha even have been the subject of a criminal investigation in the first place? Should anyone be investigated for insider trading? Is insider trading objectively a crime?[...] Contrary to the egalitarian premise giving rise to opposition to insider trading, individuals have no more right to information they have not earned than to wealth they have not earned. Should a talented analyst, for example, be forced to make his research publicly available if it would otherwise give him a competitive edge on the market? The mere fact of participating in the financial markets does not confer upon one a right to the hard-won knowledge of others.

In a free market, corporate policy on insider trading would be knowledge available to the public. If a potential investor held that the practice involved too much risk to the value of a stock, he could refuse to purchase the stock of companies permitting the practice. And companies desiring to prohibit the practice among their employees would be free do so by contractual agreement. They would have the moral and legal right to bring civil charges against an executive who violated his contractual obligations.

This gives a doubly ironic meaning to a tag-line used at the top of some posters for Moore's film: "Controversy--What Controversy?" What controversy, indeed? Nearly everyone tasked by the mainstream media to review this film is an acolyte of Moore's far-left views. But what is disturbing about the reaction to this film is not this near-universal agreement with Moore's un-intellectual vaporings. The most important common theme of the reviews is not an uncritical acceptance of Moore's slanted facts and weak reasoning: it is an openly expressed contempt for facts and reasoning as such... ...Behind all of these reviews is un-admitted Marxist premise--the root idea that is necessary to justify propaganda. In the ideology of materialist Marxist totalitarianism, it was widely accepted that ideas are just a "superstructure," a "legitimating ideology" whose sole purpose is to advance the power of one group or class over another. The seizure of political power, in this view, is the only truly important goal--and the marshalling of ideas and arguments is to be judged only by how it serves raw power politics... [TIA]

I don't agree with many of Alan Dershowitz' points in this op-ed about Saddam's trial (e.g., that America should accept even the possibility of an imperfect verdict or that "international law" should prevent us from doing as we please with Saddam), but Dershowitz does make a safe prediction:

Saddam's family has retained a small army of lawyers, which includes a nightmare team of anti-American advocates from around the Arab world and Western Europe, and features the daughter of Libya's dictator, Moammar Gadhafi. The stage is thus set for a highly politicized trial in which Saddam will try to turn the tables on his accusers by pointing fingers at "the occupying forces" and their puppet court.

Charles Johnson is keeping track of one of Saddam's lawyers, an American who gives us an idea of just how politicized the trial could become:

"I ardently oppose American and more broadly western neo-imperialism which is being imposed through the exploitation of the majority of the people of the world and the economic and military dominance of the United States. I believe that all people have a right and a duty to take all necessary measures to end the United States' inhumane dominance of the lives of billions of people."

This lawyer, Curtis F.J. Doebbler, made news today for seeking Supreme Court action on Saddam's behalf.

Doebbler, the lone American on Saddam's legal team, wants the high court to declare the detention of the ousted Iraqi president unconstitutional.

He even has more to say about the America military:

"The world's most powerful army is an army of cowards. They are soldiers who are willing to risk the lives of innocent civilians to protect their own. I don't know about my fellow Americans, but I don't feel very much protected by such cowards."

Right. I guess that makes Saddam the "hero" for surrendering to "cowards" before being dragged like a rat out of his filthy spider hole.

For a thorough, must-read debunking of the deceptions and outright lies presented in Fahrenheit 9/11, including responses from Michael Moore, see: Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11 by Dave Kopel. For an examination of Moore's irrational methods (e.g., conspiracy theories, ad-hominem attacks, maudlin appeals to emotions) and why the left embraces such tactics, see: The Left's Propagandist: Michael Moore and the Intellectual State of Today's Left by Robert W. Tracinski of TIA Daily. For a look at why Moore is willing to show graphic images of casualties in Iraq (from dead babies to dead American soldiers) yet not willing to show graphic images of 9/11 or Saddam's atrocities, see: The Cowardice of Michael Moore by Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs.

And for other critiques of Fahrenheit 9/11, see:

More Distortions From Michael Moore by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball of Newsweek;
The importance of being Michael Moore by Mark Steyn at London Telegraph; and
Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore by Christopher Hitchens at Slate.com.

I recently watched Fahrenheit 9/11. Some parts were downright offensive, such as Moore's depiction of the Iraqi dictatorship as a "sovereign nation" with kite-flying kids frolicking around Baghdad like it was a socialist utopia, and (as mentioned before) Moore's refusal to depict the 9/11 attacks or Saddam's atrocities in the same manner he depicts the casualties of the Iraq war. But because of such blatant editorializing and a general lack of objectivity, Moore's "documentary" is intellectually impotent, even as propaganda. Sure, some people will buy and eagerly swallow Moore's snake oil, but such people are probably lost causes anyway.

Despite whatever valid points could have been made in Fahrenheit 9/11 (e.g., that our government may be too closely tied to the Saudi regime or that homeland security is insufficient), all is lost in the incessant smearing of President Bush and his administration with innuendoes and personal attacks.

One example stands out. As part of a montage, Moore shows Condoleezza Rice saying: "Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11." Frankly, I was shocked to hear this, because I have never heard the Bush Administration try to directly connect Iraq to 9/11. In fact, because of 9/11 Commission findings, there has been a recent round of reaffirmations by the Administration that an Iraq-9/11 connection did not exist and was not cited as a justification for the invasion. Had a prominent member of the Bush Administration slipped up, as Moore indicated? Well, no. As I learned from the Kopel article cited above, Rice was referring to a connection in relation to terrorism in general. Moore chops Rice's quote so that we don't get the full context, which is as follows:

"Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11. It's not that Saddam Hussein was somehow himself and his regime involved in 9/11, but, if you think about what caused 9/11, it is the rise of ideologies of hatred that lead people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York. This is a great terrorist, international terrorist network that is determined to defeat freedom. It has perverted Islam from a peaceful religion into one in which they call on it for violence. And they're all linked. And Iraq is a central front because, if and when, and we will, we change the nature of Iraq to a place that is peaceful and democratic and prosperous in the heart of the Middle East, you will begin to change the Middle East...." [Emphasis added]

By "a tie" Rice meant "a kind of tie." By editing out her elaboration, Moore wants the viewer to get the false impression that Rice stated there was a direct tie between Iraq and 9/11.

Such underhandedness by Moore reminded me of a scene in another movie, Timeline. (Warning: A spoiler follows.) A group of modern-day time-travelers find themselves in the middle of a feudal war in 14th-century France. They are taken as bound prisoners before an English lord who is to decide their fate. One of the time-travelers happens to be French, and the English lord accuses him of being a spy. The Frenchman protests, truthfully, that he is merely an innocent translator. As an apparent test, the Englishman asks him to translate a French phrase. The translator is reluctant, but fearing for his life he gradually translates the phrase: "I am a spy." The Englishman smiles, draws his sword and runs the Frenchman through, killing him.

If one could somehow confront the Englishman and condemn his gross injustice, it's not difficult to imagine that his justifications would be similar to Moore's: "It was a confession. You heard him yourself. That's exactly what he said. I didn't change his words." Such are the methods of a "documentary" character assassin.

By the end of the movie, Moore wants the viewer to believe that Bush is a Saudi-controlled dimwit who waged war in Iraq solely for maintaining America's "hierarchical society" in which the poor are used as cannon fodder for oil profits. No, I'm not kidding. Apparently Moore hates Bush for the fact that -- to whatever limited degree -- the President has acted militarily to protect capitalist America, Americans and our allies from foreign terrorists. In short, Moore is a socialist propagandist whose ends justify his means. "Baghdad Bob" would be proud.

We've already accused Moore of artistic fraud for selling his admittedly subjective opinion as documentary fact. We've already pointed out that Moore sided with the enemy when he stated that Iraqi terrorists and insurgents are Revolutionaries like America's Minutemen. Fahrenheit 9/11 merely demonstrates how much further Moore is willing to go to demonize America and whitewash the atrocities of our enemies.

Is it any wonder that the terrorist group Hezbollah has offered to help promote Moore's propaganda in the Middle East?

Canadian reader Chris R. Chapman informs us that Michael Moore could be in trouble for allegedly violating Canadian election laws. ChargeMoore.com is a Web site that's been established by Campus Conservatives to push the issue with a petition. They've posted a National Post article that explains what happened (I couldn't find a link for the original Post article [UPDATE: they are now linking to the original article, and our link has been updated], but here's another source with the same story, and here's a London Free Press article from today covering the story). Frankly, the Canadian law sounds like a violation of free speech to me. Kind of like America's "campaign finance reform" laws. Ironically, those laws worked in Moore's favor.

MooreWatch.com has the latest in other Moore news.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Sunday ordered construction continued on a barrier between Israel and the West Bank despite a nonbinding world court ruling that it was "contrary to international law." Sharon also ordered "that the struggle against the opinion of the [International Court of Justice] be continued by all diplomatic and legal means." Israel says the barrier serves to keep out terrorists, while Palestinians say it is an illegal land grab creating needless hardship for their people.

This cartoon was directly inspired by a quote in this AFP article from today: Iran Bans Commemorations of '99 Unrest. (Iran Va Jahan)

Iranian authorities signaled yesterday they had banned any commemorations marking this week's fifth anniversary of violent student protests amid an effort to prevent a fresh outburst of anti-regime dissent. In comments carried in the Iranian press, the security affairs chief for Tehran, Ali Taala, said the Interior Ministry had decided to bar any gatherings and rejected a request for a student event outside Tehran University. Student representatives have also reportedly been summoned to meet Tehran police chief Gen. Morteza Talaie and Mohsen Gomi, a university representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

"In recent years there have been excellent relations between police and students and today, hand in hand, we should try to forget the bad memories of the 18th of Tir," or July 9, 1999, Talaie was quoted as telling them.

In addition, the Tehran University campus will also be shut down for the anniversary. A pro-reform group, the Association of Islamic Students, told the news agency ISNA that it had been informed the measure was taken to "disinfect the campus because of cockroach infestation."

Although Deputy Interior Minister Ali Asghar Ahmadi later insisted to ISNA that "no decision" had been taken by his ministry on the event, he did assert it was "not necessary" to mark the deadly riots.

On July 9, 1999, pro-democracy students clashed with police in Tehran and other cities in unrest sparked by a heavy-handed police and vigilante raid on a smaller dormitory protest over newspaper closures. Officially, one student was killed and hundreds of others injured in the violence, which prompted a major regime crackdown on dissent in universities -- a major driving force behind the pro-democracy movement. On each anniversary of the unrest, the government has sought to prevent any gatherings from taking place.

In 2003, protesters merely took to the streets of Tehran in their cars, honking their horns, with the sidewalks and universities patrolled by huge numbers of police. Prior to the anniversary last year, some 4,000 people were arrested in the wake of other protests.

'Free Iran' News is compiling a list of anti-regime demonstrations in the U.S. and Europe.

Also: Iranians Demonstrate Their Love of Freedom, Again

UPDATE: Roger L. Simon on the Iranian freedom movement.

UPDATE July 8: Google search results for Iran today included the following:
Iran Quiet During Anniversary of Student Protests (VOA News)
Student protesters [from past protests] held in Iran (AP)
Groups Call For Release Of Iranian Protestors (RFE/RL)

And FreeRepublic.com has pics from the demonstrations in L.A. as well as other related news and articles here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More articles, some older:
Protest Outside Iranian Embassy [in Ottawa]
Analysis: Renewed Unity Among Iranian Students (RFE/RL, July 7)
Iran Police Deploy for Traffic; Students See Threat (Reuters, July 6)

UPDATE July 9: Martin Lindeskog reports on a demonstration in Sweden.

UPDATE: Pejmanesque.com has a number of Iran-related posts worth reading for today (July 9), including this BBC retrospective and an article on Iranian prison abuse (expect a "worldwide wave of revulsion" on that last one ... any minute now).

UPDATE: Bush expresses support for freedom movement by young Iranians. (VOA News -- we rewrote their bad headline). This article, dated today, quotes President Bush as saying:

"There are people inside of Iran who are watching what's happening -- young, vibrant, professional people who want to be free. And they're wondering whether or not they'll have the opportunity." [...] "The rule of free peoples will come to the Middle East," says President Bush. And Americans "will do all in our power to help them find the blessings of liberty."

Let's hope we're doing "all in our power."

Not only does it appear that all major protests were squashed in Iran, but regime jackboots are bragging about it: Tehran Police Hail Peaceful Protest Anniversary. (RFE/RL)

General Morteza Talaie, the commander of the Iranian capital's police force, said that 8 July was what he called a "totally normal" day, despite what he said had been an extensive campaign in the "counterrevolutionary media" highlighting the anniversary.

"Totally normal" day ... in a theocratic dictatorship. Here's what one Iranian student group (SMCCDI) reported about the "peaceful" day: Sporadic and brutal clashes in most Iranian cities.

The brutal intervention of the regime's official and plainclothes agents has lead, tonight, to the arrests and injuries of tens of protesters in most main Iranian cities. In Tehran alone, the clashes are wide spread and are happening in Amir Abad, Tajrish, Zarabkhane, Kargar, Guisha, Kargar, Sadeghie, Narmak, Noor, vali e Asr and Enghelab area. Other clashes have happened, so far, in Esfahan, Shiraz and Mashad were those having defied once again the Islamic State are shouting slogans for a democratic regime change in Iran.

Many have been injured or arrested and transferred by full buses to the regime's detention centers,

The presence of the regime's foreign mercenaries and their brutality is easily noticeable. The regime seems to try to isolate the demonstrators in each area and to avoid a bigger ralliement by more demonstrators who are trying to use the darkness of the night.

Many homes have shut off their lights and people are shouting slogans on their flat roofs.

UPDATE:Iranian Dissident Says Events of July, 1999 "Marked the Death of Reform" (VOA, July 8)
In Iran, repressed journalists regroup (Washington Post, July 4)

In the country that the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders calls "the Middle East's largest prison for journalists,'' those dailies still available on newsstands brim with courtroom accounts of less fortunate publications, their editors summoned to the dock by the religious government that has closed more than 100 papers in the past four years.

And finally, here is a recent editorial discussing an issue crucial to the ultimate success of the Iranian freedom movement: Secularism & Iran (Persian Journal, July 6). I know nothing of the author, Ardavan Bahrami, but he makes some insightful observations and asks some very important questions:

Secularism and democracy are like two sides of a brain. In order to have a fully functional body, both sides of the brain with their specific responsibilities are needed in order to achieve the desired being. Therefore, those who comically advocate baseless concepts such as the Islamic Democracy can never deliver the true freedom our people are fighting for when divine rules and restrictions would oversee every aspects of their daily life. The question that eventually we have to face is are we going to adhere to principles that would declare Iran a country with no official religion; hence, no advantages given to an Iranian Muslim over those Iranians from other religions? I am talking of a society that goes further than pre-1979 where an Iranian Jew, Baha'i, Christian or a Zoroastrian can become our country's prime minister or in case of a republic, its president.

Prince Reza Pahlavi if not the only Iranian political leader believing in such principles, is definitely the only one who has been brave enough to publicly state his vision for a country with no official religion. He has defended the freedom of all political beliefs/parties, guaranteeing individual rights such as; regional languages and dialects, sexual orientations, religious beliefs as well as all social freedoms that many other progressive and democratic nations in the world enjoy or may take for granted.

However, he or any other Iranian politically active cannot and will not succeed if we as individual Iranian do not participate or take steps for our future. At times in meeting other compatriots I feel we are still blurred in our understanding of secularism or that of a true democracy. Do we really understand what it is all about? If we do, how far are we prepared to go in a free, democratic and secular Iran of the future to defend its principles? Will we make concessions every now and then and therefore, undermining the principles of secularism for religious beliefs of one or two religious public figures or groups?

Edwards eventually withdrew from the Democratic race--but the success he achieved, launching himself from relative obscurity to a prominent position on the national stage, indicates the nature of the choice Democratic voters made in this year's primary. The Democrats want a candidate who represents the morality of envy, hatred of achievement, worship of sacrifice—but they want a representative who will present that morality with an attractive, wholesome, appealing face. ["Fine Young Cannibals: How the Democratic Party Put a Nice Face on the Morality of Sacrifice", TIA, March 15, 2004]

...Dean's message was the unabashed, unrestrained voice of what some conservative columnists have dubbed the "Angry Left." This phrase, promoted over the past year by conservative commentators like James Taranto, is a non-essential description: it designates the far left by its emotions, not by its ideas. But the term has caught on because it names a prominent characteristic of today's left. The leftist establishment, under the influence of the New Left, has dispensed with the pretense that it is a movement based on intellectualism—that it seeks "scientific socialism" based on a study of the inevitable trends of history (the terms in which the Marxist Old Left presented itself). This intellectualist left has largely been replaced by an emotionalist left. Sometimes this takes the form of maudlin emotional appeals to the plight of the poor and the sick-but the dominant emotions of today's left are anger and hatred. Dean was the voice of this leftist emotionalism. [TIA]

There is a consistent theme that binds together Kerry's public statements and voting record. Waffling is not the essence of Kerry's career; instead, his dissembling is merely a smokescreen to keep voters from detecting the cause to which he has shown a lifelong ideological commitment: anti-Americanism....

...In Kerry's view, the American belief in the righteous use of force against evil--the sense of life represented by John Wayne--is the expression of a society twisted by hatred and the glorification of brutality, a society that had to be humbled by forcing an American surrender in Vietnam.

...John Kerry is the candidate who stands for American self-immolation on the altar of international collectivism.

What makes Kerry think he can get away with it? And what makes the Democrats who voted for him in this year's primaries think he is the most "electable" candidate? Kerry has known, ever since he returned from Vietnam, that he has one indispensable advantage he can exploit to keep the public from recognizing the meaning of his policies: his military service.

...Kerry is the candidate of American self-immolation, disguised as a war hero.

"A very large proportion... of [Aristotle's] supposed mistakes have no other ground than the careless mode in which his writings have been studied.... [This is] the same man who had noted the heart beating in the embryonic chick... on the third day of incubation; who had distinguished the allantoidean development of birds and reptiles from the non-allantoidean development of fishes; who had unravelled with fair accuracy the arrangement of the bronchial tubes and their relation to the pulmonary blood-vessels; and who had not only given zoological and anatomical details concerning the cephalopods... but had described nine species of them 'with so much precision and happy a selection of their distinctive characters as to enable modern naturalists to identify pretty nearly all.'"

Midway through the picture, a "peace" activist provides a perfect distillation of its argument. He recalls a conversation with an acquaintance, who observed, "bin Laden's a real asshole for killing all those people". "Yeah," says the "pacifist", "but he'll never be as big an asshole as Bush." That's who Michael Moore makes films for: those sophisticates who know that, no matter how many people bin Laden kills, in the assholian stakes he'll always come a distant second to Bush.

I can understand the point of being Michael Moore: there's a lot of money in it. What's harder to figure out is the point of being a devoted follower of Michael Moore. Apparently, the sophisticated, cynical intellectual class is so naïve it'll fall for any old hooey peddled by a preening opportunist burlesque act.