On Mitt Romney and Bain Capital
Review & Outlook: The Bain Capital Bonfire - WSJ.comAbout the best that can be said about the Republican attacks on Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital is that President Obama is going to do the same thing eventually, so GOP primary voters might as well know what's coming. Yet that hardly absolves Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and others for their crude and damaging caricatures of modern business and capitalism.
Bain's business model is little more than "rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company," says Mr. Gingrich, whose previous insights into free enterprise include years of defending the taxpayer-fed business of corn ethanol.
[...]
We have our policy differences with Mr. Romney, but by any reasonable measure Bain Capital has been a net job and wealth creator. Founded in 1984 as an offshoot of the Bain consulting company, Bain Capital's business is a combination of private equity and venture capital. The latter means taking a flyer on start-ups that may or may not pan out, something that neither Mr. Gingrich nor Mr. Obama seem to find offensive when those investments are made by Silicon Valley firms in "clean energy."
[...]
One Bain investment during Mr. Romney's tenure was to back an entrepreneur named Tom Stemberg, who was convinced he could provide savings for small-business owners if they were willing to shop at a store instead of taking deliveries. Today, the Staples chain of business-supply stores employs 90,000 people.
[...]
Imagine what might have happened if Chrysler or GM had been bought by private equity two or three decades ago. They might have been turned around much earlier, at far less pain to fewer workers, and without any taxpayer cost.
Free Objectivist Books for Students
Free Ayn Rand and Objectivist Books for StudentsGet any Ayn Rand novel or book about Objectivism for free. You just have to pledge to read it.
Salsman: Newt Gingrich Reveals The Deep Rot Within the GOP
Why Do Takers Obama and Gingrich Attack Creators Like Romney? - Forbes[...] Finally, take the case of Newt Gingrich, who despite posing earlier as the sober GOP candidate who’d run a positive campaign and wouldn’t trash his GOP rivals, this week chose to trash one of them: Mitt Romney, the only genuine wealth-maker among the entire GOP bunch. For context, note that when Gingrich first won a House seat in 1978 he was making a mere $10,000 a year; he went on to win nine more terms, the last couple as Speaker of the House (1995-1999). In 1994, the year before he became Speaker, Gingrich reported annual income of $675,000 a year – or many multiples of his official salary. In 1999 Gingrich was forced to resign from the GOP-controlled House and as Speaker, after being disciplined for wrongdoing (with a lop-sided vote of 395-28) and paying a $300,000 fine; it was the first time in U.S. history a Speaker was disciplined for ethical wrongdoing.
By the time Gingrich left as Speaker in 1999 – as a so-called public servant - his net worth had grown to astounding $7.5 million. What possible market value did Gingrich produce to attain such net worth while occupying political office?
[...] Mitt Romney, in contrast, has been a genuine creator-maker of wealth who earned his millions honestly and productively, first as a management consultant and then as a venture capitalist.
[...] That Gingrich would equate his record of taking with Romney’s record of making is truly despicable. This is a career-long taker of wealth viciously and shamelessly assaulting a career-long maker of wealth, to the glee and applause of GOP conservatives, Barack Obama and the liberal media alike. This is Newt Gingrich the demagogue, assaulting Mitt Romney the epitome of a good, productive capitalist. Indeed, this is the same smear campaign run against Mitt Romney by Ted Kennedy in 1994.
Newt Gingrich is a corrupt, unprincipled power-luster who’ll say anything and take any position necessary to attain high office, and if he can’t do that, he seeks to take wealth by selling his access to political offices.Nothing reveals more the deep rot within the GOP itself than the fact that its conservatives-evangelicals so despise wealth-makers like Mitt Romney and so sympathize with wealth-takers like Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich.
Examiner: Occupy protesters should be demanding economic freedom
Occupy protesters should be demanding economic freedom | The Examiner | Op Eds | Washington ExaminerLeading the most-free states in this year's report are Delaware and Texas, while West Virginia and New Mexico are the least free. Protesters might argue that these benefits have been accumulated by relatively few -- the 1 percent -- while leaving the majority of Americans behind.
Let's look into this conjecture using data from the Economic Policy Institute, which compares the share of income of the highest earners to that of middle and lower income earners in the mid-2000s. These data do not demonstrate that more economic freedom has been the source of inequities in the distribution of income. In fact, if we compare the 10 most economically free states between 1981 and 2005 with the 10 least free states, the opposite is the case. The ratio of average family income of the richest fifth compared with the poorest fifth is 6.9 in the most free states compared with 7.1 in the least free states.
The gap between the richest and poorest is actually larger for the least free states. Based on these numbers, it is difficult to argue that the free market has led to worse outcomes for the majority of Americans. More government spending and higher taxation will not alleviate the plight of struggling workers.
Protesters seeking to improve opportunities for all Americans should be protesting on Capitol Hill, demanding Congress to give Americans back the freedom to pursue their own economic well-being through cooperative economic activities that lead to prosperity for all.
Salsman on the Flip Flopping GOP
GOP Conservatives - Not Romney - Are The Real Flip-Floppers - Forbes:The only GOP presidential candidate demonstrating steady poll numbers and consistently superior debate performance is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. National polls show he’s the only GOP rival with a real chance of defeating President Obama next fall. He’s also a worthy rival, with the character, convictions, policies and experience needed to lead America.
Yet most GOP conservatives, especially the more religious ones, despise Mr. Romney and actively oppose him – and thus bolster Obama’s re-election chances. These are the same conservatives who gave us John McCain in 2008 and before that George W. Bush, the “compassionate conservative” who ballooned the size and scope of government more than any predecessor since WWII.
Despite President Obama’s horrendous policies and governing record, he nevertheless has a pretty good chance of winning re-election in November 2012, not only because the U.S. economy may be showing some improvement by then, compared to this year, and not only because he will have killed more Al Qaeda leaders than did Mr. Bush, but because the GOP isn’t sufficiently rallying behind the only worthy candidate: Governor Romney. Never underestimate the GOP’s willingness to shoot itself in the foot electorally.
Salsman: Capitalism Isn’t Corporatism or Cronyism
Another great one by Richard Salsman:Capitalism is the greatest socio-economic system in human history, because it’s so moral and so productive – the two features so essential to human survival and flourishing. It’s moral because it enshrines and fosters rationality and self-interest – “enlightened greed,” if you will – the two key virtues we all must consciously adopt and practice if we’re to pursue and attain life and love, health and wealth, adventure and inspiration. It produces not only material-economic abundance but the aesthetic values seen in the arts and entertainment.
But what is capitalism, exactly? How do we know it when we see it or have it – or when we haven’t, or don’t?
[...]Capitalism has been blamed for the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and for the financial crisis and bailouts of 2008, but it’s not “capitalism” but the mixed economy and corporatism-cronyism that did it. We’ve had corporatism in the U.S. for roughly the past century, and it’s getting worse over time; it’s also the system we’ve seen in Europe since at least the time of Germany’s Otto von Bismarck, who launched the womb-to-tomb welfare state in the 1870s. In the interim, of course, Europe also imposed communism, socialism and fascism. The result, we know, was mass murder, world war, and the continent-wide destruction of wealth.
Capitalism’s greatest intellectual champion, Ayn Rand (1905-1982), once defined it as “a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.” This recognition of genuine rights (not “rights” to force others to get us what we wish) is all-crucial and it has a distinctive moral foundation, according to Rand:
The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.” “The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve “the common good.” It is true that capitalism does—if that catch-phrase has any meaning—but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice.
Elaborating, Rand explained in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966) that historically, politically, economically, and morally, capitalism was the superior socio-economic system, yet also how, for decades, its achievements and virtues had been hidden and buried deliberately in an avalanche of prejudice, distortion, and falsehood. Rand argued that capitalism is a moral ideal yet also was made real, and to the greatest extent, in America in the 19th century, especially during the Gilded Age (1865-1890). Thus she called the U.S. “the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.”
Read the rest of Capitalism Isn't Corporatism or Cronyism over at Forbes.
Three Myths About President Kennedy
Ross Douthat dispels the myths about the Lord of American Camelot in his op-ed, The Enduring Cult of Kennedy - NYTimes.com:The first premise is that Kennedy was a very good president, and might have been a great one if he’d lived. Few serious historians take this view: It belongs to Camelot’s surviving court stenographers, and to popularizers like Chris Matthews, whose new best seller “Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero” works hard to gloss over the thinness of the 35th president’s actual accomplishments. [...]
In reality, the kindest interpretation of Kennedy’s presidency is that he was a mediocrity whose death left his final grade as “incomplete.” The harsher view would deem him a near disaster — ineffective in domestic policy, evasive on civil rights and a serial blunderer in foreign policy, who barely avoided a nuclear war that his own brinksmanship had pushed us toward. (And the latter judgment doesn’t even take account of the medical problems that arguably made him unfit for the presidency, or the adulteries that eclipsed Bill Clinton’s for sheer recklessness.)
The second false premise is that Kennedy would have kept us out of Vietnam. [...] Actually, it would be more accurate to describe the Vietnam War as Kennedy’s darkest legacy. [...]
The third myth is that Kennedy was a martyr to right-wing unreason. Writing on J.F.K. in the latest issue of New York magazine, Frank Rich half-acknowledges the mediocrity of Kennedy’s presidency. [...] This connection is the purest fantasy, made particularly ridiculous by the fact that both Rich and King acknowledge that Oswald was a leftist — a pro-Castro agitator whose other assassination target was the far-right segregationist Edwin Walker. [...]
This last example suggests why the J.F.K. cult matters — because its myths still shape how we interpret politics today. We confuse charisma with competence, rhetoric with results, celebrity with genuine achievement. [...]
Your Life Driven By The State
The Washington Times has an editorial on the U.S. government's banning of the non-toxic light bulb.Within four weeks, it will be a crime to manufacture a 100-watt version of Thomas A. Edison’s brilliant invention. Thanks to a Democratic Congress and the signature of President George W. Bush in 2007, anti-industrial zealots at the Energy Department received authority to blot out one of the greatest achievements of the industrial age. They’re coming for our light bulbs.
Know-it-all bureaucrats insist that foisting millions of mercury-laden fluorescent tubes on the public is going to be good for the planet. The public obviously does not agree. Voting with their wallets, people have overwhelming favored warm, nontoxic lighting options over their pale curlicue imitators. Beginning Jan. 1, Obama administration extremists will impose massive financial penalties on any company daring to produce a lighting product that fully satisfies ordinary Americans.
[...]
The reality is that this ban is yet another example of the sort of job-destroying regulations that enrich the administration’s friends at the expense of consumers. Specifically, the rules turn a 50-cent light bulb into a purchase of $3 or more.
Rampaging bureaucrats aren’t just satisfied with foisting inferior light bulbs on the public. The Energy Department uses the force of the federal government to redesign an entire suite of consumer products to meet their personal preferences. In nearly every case, their meddling makes things worse. Current regulations micromanage the function of ceiling fans, clothes washers, dehumidifiers, dishwashers, faucets, freezers, furnaces, heat pumps, lamps, pool heaters, power supplies, refrigerators, room air conditioners, shower heads, stoves, toilets and water heaters. Enough is enough.
All of this is entirely unnecessary. The public is more than capable of encouraging the development of efficient products. [Time to stock up on light bulbs]
Hallelujah! Conservatives Should Take Article VI of the Constitution Seriously
Richard Salsman on GOP Conservatives - Not Romney - Are the Real Flip-Floppers - Forbes:In that answer Gingrich was directing his remarks about faith and politics at Romney. Yet consider the hubris of Gingrich believing some deity hears his prayers and responds with sound public policy advice. The man can’t imagine an alternative to judgment apart from faith, even though it is, obviously, judgment based on the facts of reality, using reason and logic. The man says he cannot trust political leaders who don’t pray, whereas in fact we should distrust those who don’t think. In viewing candidates like Gingrich, one might be excused for uttering one worthy prayer, as was spray-painted on a wall in D.C., in the wake of 9/11, a day Americans could not live free from religion: “God please save us from all those people who believe in you.”
Mr. Romney spelled out his view of religion and politics in a speech, “Faith in America,” in December 2007:
“We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion.” I am an American running for president. I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith.” “As governor, I tried to do the right as best I knew it, serving the law and answering to the Constitution. I did not confuse the particular teachings of my church with the obligations of the office and of the Constitution — and of course, I would not do so as President.” I believe in what Abraham Lincoln called America’s ‘political religion’ — the commitment to defend the rule of law and the Constitution.”
At this stage in America’s history, as it seems to be hurtling toward bigger and bigger government, voters can probably ask nothing more from a candidate than his plain pledge to at least try and abide by the U.S. Constitution. In this regard it’s worth reminding both the religious right and religious left among us that the Constitution never once mentions a deity or Christianity and that in Article VI it specifically requires officers of government in America “to support this Constitution” and says “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Conservatives should grow up, cease their promiscuity in the GOP primaries, and take Article VI seriously.
The Missing Piece of the “Super Committee”
The failure of the "Super Committee" to reach an agreement concerning spending reductions of at least $1.2 trillion over ten years seems to symbolize the growing philosophical divide in America. Despite the "marriage" between Grover Norquist and the Republican party, the Democratic party remains more consistent in their beliefs of expanding the size and scope of government than their Republican counterparts are about diminishing it. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial by the Committee's co-chair, Representative Jeb Hensarling, reveals the mindset of his Democratic counterparts:"President Obama summed up our debt crisis best when he told Republican members of the House in January 2010 that "The major driver of our long-term liabilities . . . is Medicare and Medicaid and our health-care spending." A few months later, however, Mr. Obama and his party's leaders in Congress added trillions of dollars in new health-care spending to the government's balance sheet.""Democrats on the committee made it clear that the new spending called for in the president's health law was off the table. Still, committee Republicans offered to negotiate a plan on the other two health-care entitlements—Medicare and Medicaid—based upon the reforms included in the budget the House passed earlier this year.""The Medicare reforms would make no changes for those in or near retirement. Beginning in 2022, beneficiaries would be guaranteed a choice of Medicare-approved private health coverage options and guaranteed a premium-support payment to help pay for the plan they choose.""Democrats rejected this approach but assured us on numerous occasions they would offer a "structural" or "architectural" Medicare reform plan of their own. While I do not question their good faith effort to do so, they never did.""Republicans on the committee also offered to negotiate a plan based on the bipartisan "Protect Medicare Act" authored by Alice Rivlin, one of President Bill Clinton's budget directors, and Pete Domenici, a former Republican senator from New Mexico. Rivlin-Domenici offered financial support to seniors to purchase quality, affordable health coverage in Medicare-approved plans. These seniors would be able to choose from a list of Medicare-guaranteed coverage options, similar to the House budget's approach—except that Rivlin-Domenici would continue to include a traditional Medicare fee-for-service plan among the options.""This approach was also rejected by committee Democrats."This article contains two unique components. First, Democrats refuse to alter the manner in which their beloved programs operate--despite the looming fiscal peril. Second, and likely in the hopes of sounding bipartisan, Mr. Hensarling does not challenge the merits of the entitlement state. Essentially, Republicans agree that an individual's rights end where someone else's needs begins. In attempting to promote the concept of the mixed economy, Mr. Hensarling continues:"In the midst of persistent 9% unemployment, the committee could have enacted fundamental tax reform to simplify the tax code, help create jobs, and bring in over time the higher revenues that come with economic growth. Republicans put such a plan on the table...""Republicans were willing to agree to additional tax revenue, but only in the context of fundamental pro-growth tax reform that would broaden the base, lower rates, and maintain current levels of progressivity. This is the approach to tax reform used by recent bipartisan deficit reduction efforts such as the Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission and the Rivlin-Domenici plan.""The Democrats said no. They were unwilling to agree to anything less than $1 trillion in tax hikes—and unwilling to offer any structural reforms to put our health-care entitlements on a permanently sustainable basis."Republicans fail these debates because, fundamentally, they concur with their Democratic colleagues; the entitlement state is a moral priority. The matter on which the two parties disagree is the method for funding the entitlement programs. As Mr. Hensarling argues, lower tax rates help "broaden the base, create jobs, and bring higher revenues." He does not say that wealth is created and earned as a result of production. He does not argue that, in a capitalist system, all wealth is earned.Instead of defending the utility of liberal economics in terms of funding entitlements, the politicians who want to stand against the socialist/liberals need to address the immorality of redistributing other peoples' money.McDonald’s: Headquarters of the 2011 Anti-Industrial Revolution
From New York Post reporter spends night with Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park - NYPOST.com:
“I just talked to two gentlemen who were raped last night, and they don’t want to press charges because [authorities] wanted to take them in an ambulance and . . . do a rape kit,” she said. She passed on their account to the security force, while encouraging them to press charges.“There was another girl raped by the same man,” she said from a table in the McDonald’s, which has become the headquarters of the revolution. It’s a place to meet, to get warm, to scarf down dollar-menu grub and to use the bathroom that becomes increasingly vile as the night goes on.
Obama’s Christmas Tree Tax
Writes David S. Addington over at Heritage on Obama's Christmas Tree Tax:
President Obama’s Agriculture Department today announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees—the Christmas Tree Tax—to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees.In the Federal Register of November 8, 2011, Acting Administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. The purpose of the Board is to run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace; maintain and expend existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry” (7 CFR 1214.46(n)). And the program of “information” is to include efforts to “enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States” (7 CFR 1214.10).
To pay for the new Federal Christmas tree image improvement and marketing program, the Department of Agriculture imposed a 15-cent fee on all sales of fresh Christmas trees by sellers of more than 500 trees per year (7 CFR 1214.52). And, of course, the Christmas tree sellers are free to pass along the 15-cent Federal fee to consumers who buy their Christmas trees.
[...] The economy is barely growing and nine percent of the American people have no jobs. Is a new tax on Christmas trees the best President Obama can do?And, by the way, the American Christmas tree has a great image that doesn’t need any help from the government. [Obama Couldn't Wait: His New Christmas Tree Tax]
Holleran: CBS Fights FCC and Wins in Philadelphia
From Scott Holleran: CBS Fights FCC and Wins in Philadelphia
In a victory this Wednesday for freedom of speech, an appeals court rejected the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) decision to punish CBS for airing an expressive portion of Janet Jackson’s broadcast performance during the 2004 Super Bowl. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled by 2-1 (CBS Corp et al v. FCC, 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 06-3575) that, by imposing a penalty, the FCC “arbitrarily and capriciously” departed from prior policy that exempted “fleeting” indecency from sanctions and that the FCC “improperly imposed a penalty on CBS for violating a previously unannounced policy”. The FCC released an antagonistic and harsh statement that says the federal agency is disappointed by the decision and intends to use “all the authority at its disposal” to force broadcasters to serve the public interest when they use the so-called public airwaves. A CBS spokeswoman said the network hopes the FCC will “return to the policy of restrained indecency enforcement it followed for decades.” The FCC fined CBS $27,500 for each of the 20 stations it owned when part of Janet Jackson’s anatomy was accidentally and briefly exposed during the halftime performance.
Time Magazine Calls for Censorship, While Blaming The Victim?
Robert Spencer has some excellent commentary over at Jihad WatchIn my article at Front Page today I wrote this: "The worst aspect of this firebombing is that there are certain to be voices in the West over the next few days – some of them no doubt quite prominent and respected – who will call on Westerners to be more 'sensitive' toward Muslims, and to end this unacceptable hurting of Muslim feelings by drawing cartoons of him and making him the honorary editor-in-chief of a comedy magazine."Read the rest of Time Magazine calls for censorship, blames victims of Islamic attack on French magazine that lampooned Muhammad.
And here we are. The reason why this is the worst aspect of the firebombing is that these pleas to be more "sensitive" to Muslims amount essentially to calls for restrictions on the freedom of speech and the creation of a special, privileged class that is beyond criticism. That is the death of free society and the road to tyranny, for the class that is beyond criticism will have a free hand to do whatever it wants, and what will anyone be able to say?
But Bruce Crumley of Time Magazine, like so many other enlightened liberals, camouflages his slouch toward totalitarianism in the guise of "sensitivity" and resistance to "Islamophobia." The huge, gaping hole in his argument, however, is that he is making it after Muslims reacted violently to satire. Judaism and Christianity are lampooned on a regular basis, but Bruce Crumley never lifted a finger to call for "sensitivity" toward the religious feelings of others when Piss Christ was being displayed as a serious work of art. So Crumley's argument boils down to saying that we should capitulate in the face of violent intimidation. This is not really about being sensitive. It is about doing what the thugs want so they won't hurt us again.I'd rather die first."Firebombed French Paper Is No Free Speech Martyr," by Bruce Crumley for Time Magazine, November 2 (thanks to Anne Crockett):
Okay, so can we finally stop with the idiotic, divisive, and destructive efforts by “majority sections” of Western nations to bait Muslim members with petulant, futile demonstrations that “they” aren't going to tell “us” what can and can't be done in free societies? Because not only are such Islamophobic antics futile and childish, but they also openly beg for the very violent responses from extremists their authors claim to proudly defy in the name of common good. What common good is served by creating more division and anger, and by tempting belligerent reaction?The difficulty in answering that question is also what's making it hard to have much sympathy for the French satirical newspaper firebombed this morning, after it published another stupid and totally unnecessary edition mocking Islam. The Wednesday morning arson attack destroyed the Paris editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo after the paper published an issue certain to enrage hard-core Islamists (and offend average Muslims) with articles and “funny” cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed—depictions forbidden in Islam to boot. Predictably, the strike unleashed a torrent of unqualified condemnation from French politicians, many of whom called the burning of the notoriously impertinent paper as “an attack on democracy by its enemies.”
We, by contrast, have another reaction to the firebombing: Sorry for your loss, Charlie, and there's no justification of such an illegitimate response to your current edition. But do you still think the price you paid for printing an offensive, shameful, and singularly humor-deficient parody on the logic of “because we can” was so worthwhile? If so, good luck with those charcoal drawings your pages will now be featuring....
French Paper Charlie Hebdo Reprints Mohammad Cartoon
The French satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdo, whose office was fire bombed after it printed a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad has reproduced the image defending "the freedom to poke fun" in the four-page supplement, which was wrapped around copies of the left-wing daily Liberation.Writes Brian Love on the incident in Reuters "French paper reprints Mohammad cartoon after fire-bomb":No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place hours before an edition of Charlie Hebdo hit news stands featuring a cover-page cartoon of Mohammad and a speech bubble with the words: "100 lashes if you don't die of laughter."The weekly, known for its irreverent treatment of the political establishment and religious figures, bore the headline "Charia Hebdo," in a reference to Muslim sharia law, and said that week's issue had been guest-edited by Mohammad.The incident pits Europe's tradition of free speech and secularism against Islam's injunction barring any depictions seen as mocking the prophet. The publication of cartoons of Mohammad in a Danish newspaper in 2005 sparked unrest in the Muslim world in which at least 50 people were killed.By Islamists defending the Orwellian "religion of peace" i suppose, or perhaps "a few drunks"?Here is the photo...
“The future of Islam will be Aristotelian, or it will not be”
FrontPage Magazine has an excellent interview by Jamie Glazov with Robert R. Reilly, author of The Closing of the Muslim Mind. Here are some choice excerpts:[...] FP: Why is the West, aside from some few and brave thinkers, so blind in confronting the Islamist crisis?Reilly: Self-delusion is one problem and ignorance is another. Many in the secular West find it hard to believe that anyone takes religion seriously anymore. Since they have lost their faith, they don’t have the ability to comprehend the terms of faith in anyone else’s life. In fact, their incomprehension, their obliviousness to the sacred, is one of the things that inflames Islam against the West. We are essentially facing a theological problem and a profound spiritual disorder. People ignorant of theology are unable to recognize the nature of the problem. They want to create another economic development program in the Middle East, as if that will solve it. This is delusional and a total waste. The problem needs to be addressed at the level at which it exists, not by sociologists or psychiatrists.FP: What hope is there that some kind of “moderate” Islam can ever emerge?Reilly: [...] At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century there was far more intellectual ferment for reconciling Islam and modern science, for finding ways to adopt the best of the West to the Muslim world. These efforts largely failed. Things are now likely to get worse, not better.The intellectual impetus in the Muslim world is not with those who see the need to reopen the foreclosed questions from the ninth century as to who God is and what his relationship to reason is. (There are such Muslim thinkers but they get no support from us.) It is with those who wish to return to the seventh century and replicate the feats of the Companions of the Prophet in creating the greatest empire the world had seen up to that point. The worse things get in the Muslim world, the more support these jihadists receive because they provide an explanation and a program that can be easily understood by those who deeply feel the grievances and humiliation of their situation.It is not inevitable that the Islamists should succeed, except in the absence of any strategy to counter them. Muslim leaders like the former president of Indonesia, the late Abdurrahman Wahid, the spiritual head of the largest Muslim organization in the world, Nahdlatul Ulama, have called for a counter-strategy that would include offering “a compelling alternative vision of Islam, one that banishes the fanatical ideology of hatred to the darkness from which it emerged.” Wahid advocated a partnership with the non-Muslim world in a massively resourced effort to uphold human dignity, freedom of conscience, religious freedom, and the benefits of modernity before the juggernaut of Islamist ideology swamps the Muslim world. It was a compelling summons. It has yet to be answered.There is another way to state this at its heart. The Arab Muslim world reached its apogee when it was at its most Hellenized, i.e. under the influence of Greek philosophy. It then underwent a process of dehellenization, a divorce from reason and the extirpation of philosophy. Its path to recovery must be in these same terms – a rehellenization, a restoration of the status or reason and a return to philosophy. Is that possible? As a twentieth century Moroccan Muslim thinker put it, either the future of Islam will be Aristotelian, or it will not be.Read the rest of the interview.Related: Book Review: The Closing of the Muslim Mind by Robert R. Reilly
U.S. Policy Towards Iran
Writes Scott Holleran on U.S. Policy Towards Iran: 25 Years Of Denial:This week marks 25 years of America's appeasement toward Iran, which began in earnest on November 4, 1979, the day Iran declared war on America. Ayatollah Khomeini's thugs stormed the U.S. embassy in Teheran, Iran, and held 52 Americans as prisoners for 444 days. Despite a previous attack, the embassy's U.S. Marines had orders not to shoot.
Americans were blindfolded, beaten and held in dank prison cells, according to the Washington Post. During one interrogation, an Air Force officer had several teeth knocked out. Jihadists told another prisoner, who lived in Virginia, the number of his child's school bus. It was the beginning of Iran's systematic military siege against the West. Describing his reaction to the September 11, 2001, attack, one former prisoner, Bill Daughtery, asked: "What took them so long?"
[...]
The terms of appeasement were set in 1979, when the war was first declared and America refused to respond with military action.