Democrats vs. Free Speech
From Yahoo News:Breaking with most of his Democratic rivals, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark said Tuesday he favors amending the Constitution to ban flag burning.
Blacks vs. Affirmative Action
Critics and defenders of California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown attacked each other Wednesday....Prominent blacks charged President Bush deliberately chose a conservative black woman so it would be harder for senators to vote against her. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 11/06/03]
Comments WSJ's Taranto: "Having long ago achieved the indisputably noble goal of ensuring that America lives up to the promise of equal justice under the law for all citizens regardless of race, the civil rights movement turned to the more dubious pursuit of 'affirmative action.' Now, however, they are complaining that blacks receive favorable treatment."
George Bush: Clueless About Individual Rights
Daniel Pipes writes about George Bush's new commitment to democracy in the Middle East:'Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe.' This sentence, spoken last week by President Bush, is about the most jaw-dropping repudiation of an established bipartisan policy ever made by an American president....Understanding the rationale behind the old dictator-coddling policy makes clear the radicalism of this new approach. The old way noticed that the populations are usually more anti-American than are the emirs, kings, and presidents. Washington was rightly apprehensive that democracy would bring in more radicalized governments; this is what happened in Iran in 1979, and it nearly happened in Algeria in 1992. It also worried that once the radicals reached power, they would close down the democratic process (what was dubbed ³one man, one vote, one time²).Mr. Bush¹s confidence in democracy--that despite the ³street¹s² history of extremism and conspiracy-mindedness, it can mature and become a force of moderation and stability--is about to be tested. This process did, in fact, occur in Iran; will it recur elsewhere? The answer will take decades to find out. [NY Sun]To the contrary, it won't take decades to find out.Individual rights, not democracy, is the fundamental in politics; representative government is merely a means to the protection of individual rights and the consequent limitation of the power of government. An attempt to establish majority rule unconstrained by the principle of individual rights is destined to collapse in a power struggle over the reins of power sooner or later--and in the Middle East, there's no reason to believe it won't be sooner.Recommended Reading: Freedom--Not Democracy--for the Arabs in the Middle East and De-mystifying Democracy.
Hypocrisy, European Union Style
The Daily Telegraph's Barbara Amiel breakfasts with the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi:The EU was also sorry about Turkey, but that country could not be a member until it put its human rights and democracy in order. Meanwhile, Romania and Bulgaria were ahead in the queue.
His remarks struck me as peculiar. Turkey has been an EU candidate-member since 1997 and first applied to the EEC in 1959 when Romania and Bulgaria were still singing the Internationale. Doubtless Romania has substantially improved since the heyday of Mr and Mrs Ceausescu, but in a country where all libel is a criminal offence and Romanian journalists investigating government activities were told last year by the defence ministry's press office that "life is short and your health has too high a price to be endangered by debating highly emotional subjects", there can't be much to choose between it and Turkey....
In Iraq we are trying to build a new government with some democratic standards. Why won't you help us?" [Roger Ailes] asked. "No, no, no," Prodi said theatrically. "We will not give money when we don't know to whom." Which of course explained the hundreds of millions given to the Palestinian Authority by the EU. They must have known it would end up in Mr Arafat's Swiss bank account. I had fleeting visions of jolly African dictators cashing their Euro-cheques.
Librarians vs. “Offensive” Speech
James Taranto points out that librarians are all against restricting "offensive" speech through the use of porn filters, but then again there are some people whose "offensive" views even they won't allow in their libraries:It seems that a local charity asked Addie Ciannella, the head public librarian in Haverford Township, Pa., to put what she characterizes as a "symbol" on display in the library. She nixed the idea on the ground that the symbol might offend some people. Here's her explanation, in a letter to library trustees quoted by columnist Gil Spencer:
"It was a rather awkward situation" but she didn't feel as if she had much of a choice given her "professional opinion" which is "the library (any public library) is a place for all people of all beliefs, backgrounds, etc. Symbols can send a message of unwelcome philosophical orientation, expectations of others, and can produce ill will and even fear. I know we are an adjunct of the government but we are not the (township) or county or other government...." [Daily Times]
And what was this symbol that was so threatening to certain Haverfordians that it could not be displayed at the library? The American flag.
The Senate Should Care about Judicial Philosophy
Randy Barnett is a libertarian, but he makes some excellent points about how judicial philosophy is relevant to choosing justices in the NYSun:"Judicial liberals" are willing to ignore the Constitution when it leads to political results they find objectionable. That is why they place so high a premium on whether a particular nominees favor the outcomes of certain hand-picked cases, and why they lambaste any effort by the Rehnquist Court to hold Congress to its enumerated powers as "activist," notwithstanding that this is clearly required by the Constitution....
Some Republicans, on the other hand, are quite willing to ignore portions of the Constitution they find objectionable. The Ninth Amendment specifies that: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the People." The 14th Amendment says that: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." Both of these provisions authorize the judicial protection of unenumerated liberty rights. "Judicial conservatives" would have judges disregard them....
...senators ought to vote to confirm candidates nominated by the other party whom they believe have the required intelligence and ability to do the job of judges, and whose judicial philosophy is to follow the dictates of the Constitution, even where it cuts against a nominee's political inclinations. Those unwilling to do so lack "judicial virtue" and are unqualified. But more than this the opposing party cannot expect....
That no judge should ignore the Constitution when doing so suits their ideological agenda is a philosophy all nominees must accept. So must all senators. For they too have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, the whole Constitution, and not just the parts that, for the moment at least, lead to results they happen to like.
America’s Philosophy Is Not in the Ten Commandments
I wrote the following letter to the editor of the New York Sun:In your editorial ["Moore's Next Move," Nov. 14, 2003], you write: "No one can dispute that the Ten Commandments are fundamental to Alabama¹s and our nation¹s law and government." Yet the Ten Commandments had existed for millennia before anything like the Constitution was envisioned, and for good reason. America is a product of the Enlightenment, until then the most secular era in history and the one that overthrew religion's hold on politics. John Locke and Enlightenment intellectuals insisted on basing law upon the empirical observation of human nature, not on divine revelations. American government rests on a view of man as sovereign and independent, with the law protecting his freedom from religious authority and his right to pursue his own self-interest. The view that the Ten Commandments undergirds our law and government is simply false.Recommended Reading: The Ten Commandments vs. America, America: Under Rights or "Under God"? and Bush's Faith-Based Initiative Against Freedom
Eurospeak: Tax Harmonization Means Higher Taxes
From the UK Telegraph:[With regard to problems of harmonization, European Commission president] Prodi cared about one thing only: tax harmonisation. "Can you imagine," he asked with astonishment, "what would happen if Estonia decided it would have zero tax? All the business in the EU would go and locate in Estonia!!"
The bureaucrats know full well they represent the forces of destruction; they just don't care.
BBC Biased Against Israel, and Saddam’s Opponents
From the UK Telegraph:The BBC has appointed a "Middle East policeman" to oversee its coverage of the region amid mounting allegations of anti-Israeli bias.
...The BBC has also been the target of Downing Street accusations that it toed a pro-Baghdad line over the Iraq war and that it influenced the Today programme's handling of the dossier story that is the subject of the Hutton Inquiry.
...The [BBC's World Service] Arabic Service has been singled out by some critics as the most anti-Israeli source of the corporation's Middle East output. The BBC denied that the appointment amounted to an admission that it had "got its coverage wrong"... ["BBC appoints man to monitor 'pro-Arab bias'", November 11, 2003]
Then why did the Baghdad Bob Corporation appoint someone in the first place?
Boys Kissing Girls: Allah Forbid This Western Corruption
From Yahoo News:A new child's textbook has sketches of boys and girls together -- normal classroom fare in many countries but criticized by extremists here as a government scheme to teach children to rebel against the precepts of Islam. One Islamic Web site, in attacking the book, displayed a drawing of girls in a classroom and declared: "To show this to male students is a problem. ... A boy could remove it at every opportunity he has, kiss it and return it to his desk's drawer." As Saudi Arabia moves cautiously to reform its religious establishment, education and media, extremists are saying even these small steps go too far and will corrupt the birthplace of Islam...
The Saudi Reaper
From Cox and Forkum:
Writes Allen Forkum:
From FoxNews: Report: Al Qaeda Claims Riyadh Bombings.
The latest al-Ablaj e-mail addressed criticism that Saturday's strike hurt Arabs and Muslims, not Americans, saying Al Qaeda also believed "working with Americans and mixing with them" was forbidden.Yet also reported is that Saudi Attack Shocks Arab World. The shock is apparently that Al Qaeda takes more seriously the militant Islamic fundamentalism preached by the Saudis than the Saudis do themselves. What is shocking is this quote from the article:
"If any good can come of such horror ... it is surely that no one who now hears the name Al Qaeda will have any image in their mind other than one which truly reflects what the organization stands for: Innocent men and women being rushed to hospital dripping blood or trying to comfort their terrified children," the Saudi newspaper Arab News said in an editorial Tuesday.Oh really? Did the Arab News not get that image on September 11, 2001? The name Al Qaeda didn't sound so bad when Americans were being murdered by the thousands? But now it does? What better way to illustrate how their Islamic sympathies have blinded them to the evil of Al Qaeda until they themselves are viciously attacked. Not that they'll blame their Islamic fundamentalism...
UPDATE: OUCH! We thought this idea was very original. But we noticed today a cartoon by Mike Thompson at American RealPolitik. How many Saudi-eating plant cartoons can there be?
Left-wing Code Words and General Clark’s Incoherence
To: James Taranto, Opinion JournalDear James:
You write yesterday that Gen.Clark reaches new heights of incoherence in explaining why he approves of our having fought in Kosovo but not in Iraq. But Clark's position, while wrong, is not incoherent.
Leftists support military action when it does nothing to increase American power or advance American interests; they oppose it when America benefits. Our action in Kosovo was purely "humanitarian," altruistic, self-sacrificial--since we sought no gain for ourselves, they are all in favor. Invading Iraq, on the other hand, was self-interested--and therefore wrong in their eyes.
When Democrats accuse the president of waging war under "false pretenses" or of spilling "blood for oil" these are left-wing code words for what they really object to: America's unapologetic assertion of its own interests.
Sincerely yours,
Paul Blair
Manhattan
America Needs to More More Aggressive Against Terrorism
The Daily Pennsylvanian reports on Professor Yaron Brook's talk "Why We Are Losing the War on Terrorism":"The war in Iraq has done nothing to quell terrorism," Brook said. "We must grind [terrorists] to dust until victory is achieved." Since 9/11, Brook has been advocating a more aggressive American response to terrorism
...he explained that the U.S. has not eradicated terrorism because it has not been sufficiently brutal. He asserted that the U.S. response must target not individual terrorists, but rather, must fight against militant Islam and the states that sponsor it. "Our enemy is not terrorism," Brook said. "Our enemy is militant Islam. To stop them, we must kill or capture their leaders -- military and spiritual. The states that support militant Islam must be the first targets."...He also indicated that he would not preclude the use of nuclear weapons in the United States' current war. "War is about destroying the enemy," Brook said. "I'm willing to do whatever it takes to win, and I would not rule out nuclear weapons."
..."The talk was excellent," Drexel student Andrew Sternberg said. "He made me see things much more clearly and helped me realize that there's an alternative to the liberal anti-war ideas." [Daily Pennsylvanian, "Speaker: U.S. Not aggressive enough", November 07, 2003]
Recommended Reading: End States That Sponsor Terrorism
Cartoon: Warm Up
From Cox and Forkum:
Writes Allen Forkum:
The Nov. 11 New Yorker editorial -- Getting Warmer -- is a typical example of global warming advocacy. It starts out sounding very certain about global warming with sentences like this:
[T]he evidence that human activity is changing the planet's climate has continued to mount, as has evidence of the consequences.But later, when discussing criticism of the theory, you get less certain sentences like this:
Though it's impossible to determine exactly how much of the current warming trend is the result of atmospheric changes wrought by man and how much is caused by natural climate variation, the vast majority of credible studies in fact point to the former as the more significant factor.Scientific certainty is crucial because there's nothing uncertain about the freedoms environmentalists propose to take away from us. Without scientific certainty, the alleged global warming can never be curtailed by government action, only mankind will be curtailed. And that is the real goal of environmentalists.
Here's what is being said about some of those "credible studies." From a National Post article by Tim Patterson, Kyoto debunked:
The growing number of scientists who dispute the treaty's scientific foundation [regarding global warming] have become increasingly vocal, regularly pushing their case in the media as groundbreaking studies continue to be published that pull the rug out from under Kyoto's shaky edifice.Of these, none may have the long-term impact of the paper published yesterday [Oct. 28] in the prestigious British journal Energy and Environment, which explains how one of the fundamental scientific pillars of the Kyoto Accord is based on flawed calculations, incorrect data and a biased selection of climate records.
(Hat tip: Adam Ierymenko, via HBL)
One of those vocal scientist is S. Fred Singer, whose group, The Science & Environmental Policy Project, is known for debunking the "science" of environmentalism. In a recent press release, Singer commented on global warming and the Climate Stewardship Act:
"The UN-IPCC science panel, which is most often cited by supporters of this proposal, based its conclusions on three major claims. And although widely publicized, none of them pass muster. They have been or are being disproved by actual data."But just to cover their bases, environmentalist scaremongers have a new doomsday scenario: Global warming could trigger a new ice age.
Veteran’s Day
From Cox and Forkum:
Writes Allen Forkum: Today is the 50th anniversary of Veterans Day. You can learn more about here: VFW: Origins of Veterans Day. From Edwin A. Locke, Giving Real Meaning to Veterans Day: Fighting for Freedom is No Sacrifice:
Because human life is so precious, war should never be undertaken unless our rights are threatened. It is often said that our soldiers must sacrifice themselves for our country. This is precisely what we must not ask them to do. A sacrifice entails the surrender of a greater value for a lesser one. But if a man loses his life on the premise, "I would rather die than live in slavery," it is a tragic loss—but it is not a sacrifice. Such a man is acting in his own interests, to protect his most precious values.
Meanwhile, Democrats Use Veterans Day to Attack Bush.
Arafat’s Billions
From CBS' 60 Minutes:...part of the Palestinian leader's wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close to $1 billion -- with investments in companies like a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ramallah, a Tunisian cell phone company and venture capital funds in the U.S. and the Cayman Islands. Although the money for the portfolio came from public funds like Palestinian taxes, virtually none of it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all controlled by Arafat...
...The stockpile went well beyond the portfolio. Arafat accumulated another $1 billion with the help of -- of all people -- the Israelis. Under the Oslo Accords, it was agreed that Israel would collect sales taxes on goods purchased by Palestinians and transfer those funds to the Palestinian treasury. But instead, Indyk says, "that money is transferred to Yasser Arafat......Palestinians certainly paid dearly for something else [Salam Fayyad, a former World Bank official] uncovered: a system of monopolies in commodities -- like flour and cement -- that Arafat handed out to his cronies, who then turned around and fleeced the public. Fayyad says it could accurately be seen as gouging his own people. "And especially in Gaza which is poorer, which is something that is totally unacceptable and immoral, actually."
Of all the monopolies, none was as lucrative or as corrupt as the General Petroleum Corporation, the one for gasoline. The corporation took the fuel it purchased from an Israeli company and watered it down with kerosene, not only defrauding the Palestinian drivers, but wrecking their car engines. Fayyad says the Petroleum Corporation charged exorbitant prices, and Arafat got a hefty kickback...
...There's yet another stash of money Arafat might be asked about: the funds he collected when he was chairman of the PLO in exile. The PLO's former treasurer told us he saw Saddam Hussein hand Arafat a $50 million check for supporting him during the first Gulf War. And there were other large gifts from the KGB and the Saudis. [Arafat's Billions, November 9, 2003]
Lecture at University of Southern California: “The Moral Case for Supporting Israel”
Since its founding in 1948 Israel has been under siege--courageously fending off hostile neighbors while defending itself against Arab terrorists. In a Mideast dominated by Arab monarchies, theocracies and dictatorships--Israel is a free country standing as the lone bastion of Western civilization in that region. Yet for decades Israel has faced growing international pressure--often led by the United States--to compromise with its enemies, and act against its self-interest. In this talk, Dr. Brook argues that the United States should unequivocally support Israel's effort at self-defense; that allowing Israel to rid itself of terrorist and foreign military threats is in America's best interests. Israel is our only true ally in the Mideast, and supporting it is the only moral thing for the United States to do.The Moral Case for Supporting Israel
By Yaron Brook, Ph.D.
Tuesday, November 18, 7:30 PM
University of Southern California
3620 McClintock, Los Angeles, CA 90089
Seely G. Mudd (SGM) Building, Room 123
Q & A follows the lecture.
More information: aynrand@usc.edu
Yaron Brook is the best commentator on the Middle East that I know. He brings moral clarity better than any of the scholars in the field.--Editor
Americans Dying to Uphold Theocracy in Afghanistan
Afghanistan unveiled a post-Taliban draft constitution Monday....The draft starts by declaring that "Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic..."
"The religion of Afghanistan is the sacred religion of Islam. Followers of other religions are free to perform their religious ceremonies within the limits of the provisions of law," the draft states, according to an English translation provided by the government. While avoiding direct mention of Shariah, Islamic holy law, the draft states that "in Afghanistan, no law can be contrary to the sacred religion of Islam and the values of this Constitution." [Associated Press, 11/3/03]