Getting It and Not Getting It
I meant to post this many weeks ago. I meant to do a lot of things weeks ago, but as we all know, sometimes life has other plans. Nothing major happened, except for my wife's appendectomy a week and a half ago, but just a lot of little things. So while the articles I'm referring to are a bit dated, they're still valuable because they still speak for certain portions of our population and distill their thought processes.
Leonard Pitts is an obviously intelligent writer who, along with millions of others in the Western world, find myriad ways to avoid admitting the truth. You know the truth I speak of. It has to do with Islam and terrorism, that unavoidable connection between the two. The connection that can't be admitted if one is a member of the "What, me islamophobe?" community. Here is Pitts' most recent obfuscation.
Even after Oct. 1, 1910, when a bomb destroyed the Los Angeles Times building and killed 20 men.
And Nov. 24, 1917, when 10 people died in the bombing of a police station in Milwaukee.
And Sept. 16, 1920, when 38 people lost their lives in a bombing on Wall Street.
And May 18, 1927, when 45 people, most of them children, died in a school bombing in Bath Township, Mich.
And Sept. 15, 1963, when four little girls died in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.
And Feb. 26, 1993, when a bomb in a basement of the World Trade Center left six people dead.
And April 19, 1995 when a truck bomb destroyed a federal building in Oklahoma City, claiming 168 lives.
And Sept. 11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 people were killed by hijackers who used captured jetliners as guided missiles.
Read more:
here.But notice how far back in time Pitts has to travel in order to find his non-Islamic terrorist (or should I say "extremist", or "militant", or "activist"?) attacks. He is unwilling to face the fact that since 9/11, there have been over 15,000 terrorist attacks by "a tiny minority" of members of the
Religion of Peace. Does it make a person "islamophobic" to keep track of these attacks? Or even to notice them and point them out? Apparently to Pitts, it does. And it also destroys the moral equivalency argument that so many on the left who don't want to slight the Muslim community for excusing or ignoring the terrorists in their midst.
On the other hand, there's
Mark Steyn. He is brave enough to even face Obama.
Like a lot of guys who’ve been told they’re brilliant one time too often, President Obama gets a little lazy, and doesn’t always choose his words with care. And so it was that he came to say a few words about Daniel Pearl, upon signing the “Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act.”
Pearl was decapitated on video by jihadist Muslims in Karachi on Feb. 1, 2002. That’s how I’d put it.
This is what the president of the United States said: “Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is.”
Now Obama’s off the prompter, when his silver-tongued rhetoric invariably turns to sludge. But he’s talking about a dead man here, a guy murdered in public for all the world to see. Furthermore, the deceased’s family is standing all around him. And, even for a busy president, it’s the work of moments to come up with a sentence that would be respectful, moving, and true. Indeed, for Obama, it’s the work of seconds, because he has a taxpayer-funded staff sitting around all day with nothing to do but provide him with that sentence.
Instead, he delivered the one above. Which, in its clumsiness and insipidness, is most revealing. First of all, note the passivity: “The loss of Daniel Pearl.” He wasn’t “lost.” He was kidnapped and beheaded. He was murdered on a snuff video. He was specifically targeted, seized as a trophy, a high-value scalp. And the circumstances of his “loss” merit some vigor in the prose. Yet Obama can muster none.
But then, Obama gets it about as well as Pitts does. The tragedy of Obama not getting it is that he is the leader of the free world.
Of course, Steyn has paid for being politically incorrect, for pointing out that, not only is the emperor wearing no clothes, but the terrorists are wearing Islamic garb. He was
sued by a Canadian Muslim organization and brought up on charges by the misnamed
Canadian Human Rights Commission. That's what you get when you refuse to submit, and when you refuse to exchange the truth for lies and then believe the lies and condemn the truth.
But those are the people we need to get us through these troubled times . . . and into the next troubled times.
Labels: Canada, islam, Leonard Pitts, Mark Steyn, terrorism
But It's For Our Own Good
Let's see. In a few years we won't be allowed to use incandescent light bulbs. If we don't have health insurance we can face fines and possible jail time. We shouldn't use oil from Islamic nations, but we aren't allowed to drill our own or build nuclear power plants to power the future battery powered automobiles, which I'm sure we will be "encouraged" to buy in order to "save the planet." Muslims who promote and engage in Jihad are the victims and the people that they murder are - um - are - the oppressors? And that's not just in Israel any more. Local Detroit papers went on for days with articles about how the local Muslim community was afraid of that backlash that we've been warned about since September 12, 2001, you know, due to the latest unfortunate incident where a Muslim is stricken with
Sudden Jihad Syndrome, this time at Ft. Hood, where a Muslim major went on a short shooting spree that had nothing to do with the fact that he's Muslim - and well, I'm sure everyone has read about all of those politically incorrect red flags that were ignored, since had anyone in authority taken action, they would have been roundly attacked by CAIR and their fellow traveling diversity mongers. And yes, many fellow citizens have allowed themselves to be convinced that this had nothing to do with Islam.
And then there's
this piece by Mark Steyn about how we're poised to loose even more of our formerly Constitutionally protected, but granted by our Creator, rights.
I’m always appreciative when a fellow says what he really means. Tim Flannery, the jet-setting doomsaying global warm-monger from down under, was in Ottawa the other day promoting his latest eco-tract, and offered a few thoughts on “Copenhagen”—which is transnational-speak for December’s UN Convention on Climate Change. “We all too often mistake the nature of those negotiations in Copenhagen,” remarked professor Flannery. “We think of them as being concerned with some sort of environmental treaty. That is far from the case. The negotiations now ongoing toward the Copenhagen agreement are in effect diplomacy at the most profound global level. They deal with every aspect of our life and they will influence every aspect of our life, our economy, our society.”
Hold that thought: “They deal with every aspect of our life.” Did you know every aspect of your life was being negotiated at Copenhagen? But in a good way! So no need to worry. After all, we all care about the environment, don’t we? So we ought to do something about it, right? And, since “the environment” isn’t just in your town or county but spreads across the entire planet, we can only really do something at the planetary level. But what to do? According to paragraph 38 on page 18 of the latest negotiating text, the convention will set up a “government” to manage the “new funds” and the “related facilitative processes.”
The whole thing is worth reading because one, it's by Mark Steyn, and two, we need to pay attention to what these "selfless" environmentalists have in store for the rest of us.
As our rights are slowly eaten away, it appears that it is with the blessings of a large portion of our fellow American citizens. Of the 53% of the voters who elected our current president, there are many who did not know his real agenda. Some of them foolishly depended on the Obama-loving, Bush-hating MSM for their information. Others were just stupid. But a lot of folks agree wholeheartedly with the Obama agenda. For example, there was this letter in today's Detroit Free Press.
Thanks for the comprehensive coverage of Michigan tax needs and present income statistics.
You report, "The top 5% of households in Michigan now have as much or more income than the bottom half." Anyone who reads this and does not support a graduated income tax either didn't graduate from the 7th grade, or did graduate from Harvard Business School and is now one of the millionaires or billionaires protecting their incomes in that 5% bracket.
It's not hard to guess who is fighting the graduated income tax movement, and who is funding it.
Most of your readers are too young to remember the days when our country and leaders believed in a sane and fair distribution of wealth in this country.
In the '50s, we had an excess profits tax where companies had to pay their excess profits in taxes or give the money to their employees in bonuses. Blue-collar workers received healthy bonuses every quarter at the company where I worked.
Excess profits? How much is excess? And what will this writer say when some bureaucrat decides that he has to part with more of his excess income? I bet this is a person who decries "obscene" profits too . . . as opposed to merely erotic profits, or "artistic" or . . . you get the idea. Too many people today find freedom an
irksome burden and are looking for scapegoats for their problems. Obama and the Democratic Congress are helping out with lists of the most popular, you know, Fox News, Big Pharma, Wall Street, the Insurance Industry.
But remember - Obama and his cronies, and environmentalists, and the diversity lobby, and the Islamic community have your best interests at heart. They know what's better for you much better than you do. After all, they're intellectuals.
Labels: Detroit Free Press, economy, environment, islam, Mark Steyn, MSM, Obama, Obamacare
Gratitude and Ingratitude
Nobody says it better than
Mark Steyn. In his take down of Jeremy Wright and his protege, Barack Obama, he makes an interesting and instructive comparison between Irving Berlin and Michelle Obama.
The song the Reverend Wright won’t sing is by Irving Berlin, a contemporary of Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin and Lorenz Hart, all the sophisticated rhymesters. But only Berlin could have written without embarrassment “God Bless America.” He said it directly, unaffectedly, unashamedly — in seven words:
God Bless America
Land that I love.
Berlin was a Jew and he suffered slights: He grew up in the poverty of New York’s Lower East Side. When he made his name and fortune, his marriage to a Park Avenue heiress resulted in her expulsion from the Social Register. In the Thirties, her sister moved in with a Nazi diplomat and proudly flaunted her diamond swastika to Irving. But Berlin spent his infancy in Temun, Siberia (until the Cossacks rode in and razed his village) and he understood the great gift he’d been given:
God Bless America
Land that I love.
The Reverend Wright can’t say those words. His shtick is:
God damn America
Land that I loathe.
Irving Berlin came to the United States at a time when if you were going to make it, you had to make it on your own. There were no government handouts ready for each and every immigrant, legal or illegal, who made it to these shores. Rather than seethe and whine about the hardships and the anti-Jewish prejudice of the day, he worked to succeed and get past all of the hardships and prejudice.
My grandparents came to the U.S. from Russia and Poland around the same time Berlin did, and for the same reasons. As Jews, they wanted to escape the Cossacks, the pogroms, the hatred that kept them prisoner in the ghettos. While neither of my grandfathers made the same kind of living Berlin did, they both contributed to the U.S., made a decent living and raised families. Actually, neither one of them did anywhere near as well, even, as Barack and Michelle Obama, but I never heard either one of them ever complain about having to work hard and struggle. They didn't think anyone owed them anything beyond what they earned. They were able to bounce back from setbacks without demanding welfare. Their children went to public schools, rode busses to get places, and had no resentment about their situation. At least, I never heard it if they did. They were a different breed back then than we are today.
So, Michelle Obama, shut up and stop your whining. You have more than most people in the world can even dream of.
Labels: Irving Berlin, Mark Steyn, Michelle Obama, Obama
Quoting Mark Steyn
So all I'm doing tonight is passing on the words of others. Sometimes there is nothing to add to what someone else says because it is said so well.
I wasn't going to post anything on the Virginia Tech incident, but then things keep popping up, like this column from my favorite columnist,
Mark Steyn.
I live in northern New England, which has a very low crime rate, in part because it has a high rate of gun ownership. We do have the occasional murder, however. A few years back, a couple of alienated loser teens from a small Vermont town decided they were going to kill somebody, steal his ATM cards, and go to Australia. So they went to a remote house in the woods a couple of towns away, knocked on the door, and said their car had broken down. The guy thought their story smelled funny so he picked up his Glock and told 'em to get lost. So they concocted a better story, and pretended to be students doing an environmental survey. Unfortunately, the next old coot in the woods was sick of environmentalists and chased 'em away. Eventually they figured they could spend months knocking on doors in rural Vermont and New Hampshire and seeing nothing for their pains but cranky guys in plaid leveling both barrels through the screen door. So even these idiots worked it out: Where's the nearest place around here where you're most likely to encounter gullible defenseless types who have foresworn all means of resistance? Answer: Dartmouth College. So they drove over the Connecticut River, rang the doorbell, and brutally murdered a couple of well-meaning liberal professors. Two depraved misfits of crushing stupidity (to judge from their diaries) had nevertheless identified precisely the easiest murder victims in the twin-state area. To promote vulnerability as a moral virtue is not merely foolish. Like the new Yale props department policy, it signals to everyone that you're not in the real world.
Labels: Mark Steyn, Virginia Tech
Mark Steyn Does it Again
Here is a great one from one of today's best and smartest social/political analysts.
Today, lots of experts crank out analyses positing China as the unstoppable hegemon of the 21st century. But the real threat is not the strengths of your enemies but their weaknesses. China is a weak power: Its population will get old before it gets rich. Russia is a weak power: If Africa has health crises, the Middle East has Islamists and North Korea has nukes, then Russia's got the lot: a dying population whose men have a lower life expectancy than Bangladeshis with a Muslim separatist movement sitting on top of the biggest pile of nukes on the planet. Europe is a weak power, remorselessly evolving month by month into Eurabia.
Islam is a weak power: In the words of Dr. Mahathir Mohammed, the former prime minister of Malaysia, one of the least worst Muslim nations in the world, "We produce practically nothing on our own, we can do almost nothing for ourselves, we cannot even manage our wealth." But in Iran they're working full-speed on nukes that will be able to hit every European city.
North Korea is a weak power: Its population is starving but it's about to "test" the latest variation on its aptly named No Dong missile. I mean "test" in the sense that I test my new shotgun by firing it through your kitchen window. They're going to launch it and see where it comes down — maybe Tokyo, maybe San Diego; maybe they'll aim for Los Angeles but it'll fall in Vancouver. Hey, that's why we call it a "test," right?
He makes more important points in the rest of his essay.
Labels: Mark Steyn
Feminism, Multiculturalism, the MSM, and Terrorism, the Unholy Alliance
I vaguely remembered this
atrocity from a few years back. I didn't know we were lied to by the news outlets who reported it until this
article by Mark Steyn.
every December 6, our own unmanned Dominion lowers its flags to half-mast and tries to saddle Canadian manhood in general with the blame for the Montreal massacre -- the 14 women murdered by Marc Lepine, born Gamil Gharbi, the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater, though you wouldn't know that from the press coverage. Yet the defining image of contemporary Canadian maleness is not M Lepine/Gharbi but the professors and the men in that classroom, who, ordered to leave by the lone gunman, meekly did so, and abandoned their female classmates to their fate -- an act of abdication that would have been unthinkable in almost any other culture throughout human history. The "men" stood outside in the corridor and, even as they heard the first shots, they did nothing. And, when it was over and Gharbi walked out of the room and past them, they still did nothing. Whatever its other defects, Canadian manhood does not suffer from an excess of testosterone.
Nope, I didn't know he was a Muslim either. So even 14 years ago, the MSM was preparing for the "anti-Muslim backlash" we've been promised since the September 11 attacks. Steyn covers more ground in this article and yes, you should read the whole thing.
I originally linked to Steyn from
Gates of Vienna. Another good link and another perspective is
here at New Sisyphus.
Labels: Gates of Vienna, Mark Steyn, MSM, terrorism
More Thoughts by Mark Steyn on the Idiocy Known as Multiculturalism
Go
here. Read more intelligent commentary about why the self-destructive religion of Multiculturalism is helping our enemies to kill us.
WITH hindsight, the defining encounter of the age was not between Mohammed Atta's jet and the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, but that between Mohammed Atta and Johnelle Bryant a year earlier. Bryant is an official with the US Department of Agriculture in Florida, and the late Atta had gone to see her about getting a $US650,000 government loan to convert a plane into the world's largest crop-duster. A novel idea.
The meeting got off to a rocky start when Atta refused to deal with Bryant because she was but a woman. But, after this unpleasantness had been smoothed out, things went swimmingly. When it was explained to him that, alas, he wouldn't get the 650 grand in cash that day, Atta threatened to cut Bryant's throat. He then pointed to a picture behind her desk showing an aerial view of downtown Washington - the White House, the Pentagon et al - and asked: "How would America like it if another country destroyed that city and some of the monuments in it?"
Fortunately, Bryant's been on the training course and knows an opportunity for multicultural outreach when she sees one. "I felt that he was trying to make the cultural leap from the country that he came from," she recalled. "I was attempting, in every manner I could, to help him make his relocation into our country as easy for him as I could."
So a few weeks later, when fellow 9/11 terrorist Marwan al-Shehhi arrived to request another half-million dollar farm subsidy and Atta showed up cunningly disguised with a pair of glasses and claiming to be another person entirely - to whit, al-Shehhi's accountant - Bryant sportingly pretended not to recognise him and went along with the wheeze. The fake specs, like the threat to slit her throat and blow up the Pentagon, were just another example of the multicultural diversity that so enriches our society.
For four years, much of the western world behaved like Bryant. Bomb us, and we agonise over the "root causes" (that is, what we did wrong). Decapitate us, and our politicians rush to the nearest mosque to declare that "Islam is a religion of peace". Issue bloodcurdling calls at Friday prayers to kill all the Jews and infidels, and we fret that it may cause a backlash against Muslims. Behead sodomites and mutilate female genitalia, and gay groups and feminist groups can't wait to march alongside you denouncing Bush, Blair and Howard. Murder a schoolful of children, and our scholars explain that to the "vast majority" of Muslims "jihad" is a harmless concept meaning "decaf latte with skimmed milk and cinnamon sprinkles".
Until the London bombings. Something about this particular set of circumstances - British subjects, born and bred, weaned on chips, fond of cricket, but willing to slaughter dozens of their fellow citizens - seems to have momentarily shaken the multiculturalists out of their reveries. Hitherto, they've taken a relaxed view of the more, ah, robust forms of cultural diversity - Sydney gang rapes, German honour killings - but Her Britannic Majesty's suicide bombers have apparently stiffened even the most jelly-spined lefties.
At The Age, Terry Lane, last heard blaming John Howard for the "end of democracy as we know it" and calling for "the army of my country ... to be defeated" in Iraq, now says multiculturalism is a "repulsive word" whereas "assimilation is a beaut" and should be commended. In the sense that he seems to have personally assimilated with Pauline Hanson, he's at least leading by example.
Where Lane leads, Melbourne's finest have been rushing to follow, lining up to sign on to the New Butchness. "There is something wrong with multiculturalism," warns Pamela Bone. "Perhaps it is time to say, you are welcome, but this is the way it is here." Tony Parkinson - The Age's resident voice of sanity - quotes approvingly France's Jean-Francois Revel: "Clearly, a civilisation that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."
And yet, The Age's editor Andrew Jaspan still lives in another world. You'll recall that it was Jaspan who objected to the energy and conviction of certain freed Australian hostage, at least when it comes to disrespecting their captors: "I was, I have to say, shocked by Douglas Wood's use of the 'arsehole' word, if I can put it like that, which I just thought was coarse and very ill-thought through ... As I understand it, he was treated well there. He says he was fed every day, and as such to turn around and use that kind of language I think is just insensitive."
And heaven forbid we're insensitive about terrorists. True, a blindfolded Wood had to listen to his jailers murder two of his colleagues a few inches away, but how boorish would one have to be to hold that against one's captors? A few months after 9/11, National Review's John Derbyshire dusted off the old Cold War mantra "Better dead than red" and modified it to mock the squeamishness of politically correct warfare: "Better dead than rude". But even he would be surprised to see it taken up quite so literally by Andrew Jaspan.
Usually it's the hostage who gets Stockholm Syndrome, but the newly liberated Wood must occasionally reflect that in this instance the entire culture seems to have caught a dose. And, in a sense, we have: multiculturalism is a kind of societal Stockholm Syndrome. Atta's meetings with Bryant are emblematic: He wasn't a genius, a master of disguise in deep cover; indeed, he was barely covered at all, he was the Leslie Nielsen of terrorist masterminds - but the more he stuck out, the more Bryant was trained not to notice, or to put it all down to his vibrant cultural tradition.
Read it and weep.
Labels: Mark Steyn, multiculturalism
Mark Steyn on Flag Burning
Read
this article by
Mark Steyn as to why the Flag Desecration Amendment is a bad idea.
In other words, if the objection to flag desecration is that it's distasteful, tough. Like those apocryphal Victorian matrons who discreetly covered the curved legs of their pianos, the culture already goes to astonishing lengths to veil the excesses of those who are admirably straightforward in their hostility.
If people feel that way, why protect them with a law that will make it harder for the rest of us to see them as they are? One thing I've learned in the last four years is that it's very difficult to talk honestly about the issues that confront us. A brave and outspoken journalist, Oriana Fallaci, is currently being prosecuted for ''vilification of religion,'' which is a crime in Italy; a Christian pastor has been ordered by an Australian court to apologize for his comments on Islam. In the European Union, ''xenophobia'' is against the law. A flag-burning amendment is the American equivalent of the rest of the West's ever more coercive constraints on free expression. The problem is not that some people burn flags; the problem is that the world view of which flag-burning is a mere ritual is so entrenched at the highest levels of Western culture.
Banning flag desecration flatters the desecrators and suggests that the flag of this great republic is a wee delicate bloom that has to be protected. It's not. It gets burned because it's strong.
Even in these troubled times, outlawing the desecration of the flag is a bad idea.
Labels: flag burning, Mark Steyn
Mark Steyn Nails it Again
Here's a
brilliant column by Mark Steyn on Sen. Durbin's stupid, slanderous, self-serving Gitmo = Gulag remarks. My favorite line is:
Had Durbin said, "Why, these atrocities are so terrible you would almost believe it was an account of the activities of my distinguished colleague Robert C. Byrd's fellow Klansmen," that would have been a little closer to the ballpark but still way out.
The rest of the piece is worth reading too.
Labels: Mark Steyn, Richard Durbin
A Mark Steyn Tsunami Update
Here is a brilliant column by Mark Steyn. He does more than just update us on the tsunami relief effort.
Labels: Mark Steyn, tsunami
War's legitimate object is more perfect peace. Flavius Vegitius Renatus
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CHALLAH AKBAR
