We are so civilizationally screwed.

School bans superhero lunchboxes.

///If you know anything about superheroes, the underlying morality is pretty much everything. Supervillains use their powers for evil ends. Superheroes use theirs to protect the vulnerable and uphold the good. Teaching kids that there’s no difference between the two is the very opposite of moral education.

 It reminds me of William F. Buckley’s famous retort to those who claimed there was no moral distinction between the United States and the Soviet Union. If you have one man who pushes old ladies in front of oncoming buses, Buckley explained, and you have another man who pushes old ladies out of the way of oncoming buses, it simply will not do to describe them both as the sorts of men who push old ladies around.

 A country, and a civilization, that actively chooses to render such distinctions meaningless has lost the confidence to sustain itself. There’s an added irony here.

Around the time little Laura’s school was cracking down on Wonder Woman lunchboxes, two women, Kristen Griest and Shaye Haver, passed the Army Ranger training course for the first time. The news was hailed across the country as a huge step forward for women. Are these women role models or not? Are they heroes? Or should they be condemned for their willingness to use violence when necessary? Maybe Laura should get a Griest and Haver lunchbox and find out.//

Why is the National Park Service doing videos on Islam?????

Our country is insane.

Great job of screening who gets near Top Secret information there, Army.

Crazy-land...we live in Crazy-land.

Convicted Wiki-leaks traitor wants you to pay for a sex-change operation.

Manning’s attorney also denied that Manning’s public statement was an example of the narcissistic tendencies testified to at trial by psychologists. Coombs said Manning never intended for the secrets about his gender confusion that he told a computer hacker during online chats to come out.

“This is really trying to let people have the answer that they wanted,” Coombs said of Manning’s motivations. “She never really wanted this to be public to begin with, when the information came out, you need to understand that she gave it to Adrian Lamo in a very private setting, in a one-on-one chat, never expecting this to be public. Now that it is, unfortunately, you have to deal with it in a public manner.”

Coombs said he hasn’t spoken with Manning about sex-reassignment surgery and said Manning is not seeking to join a female prison population.

“I think the ultimate goal is to be comfortable in her skin, and to be the person that she’s never had an opportunity to be,” Coombs said.

A military judge on Wednesday sentenced Manning to 35 years in prison for leaking thousands of secret government documents to WikiLeaks, but with time served, Manning could get parole in seven years.

Coombs said he expects Manning would get parole, but the ultimate goal is a pardon from President Barack Obama.

“I actually expect him to get pardoned, at least that’s what my hope is, that the president will in fact pardon Pfc. Manning,” Coombs said.//

Sherlock Holmes banned in Virginia.

Virginia School Board bans "A Study in Scarlet" from 6th Grade reading list for purported derogatory depiction of Mormons.

While they're at it, they should take a look at the "The Red-headed League" which stereotypes red-heads in a derogatory fashion.

Just joking.

*Sheesh*

The Iron Age and the Plastic Age

If you have an MP3 player, or preferably an Ipod, and you like history, you should check out Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. Carlin is a self-proclaimed "history fan" rather than a history scholar and his aim is to take the events of history and make them real to us as actual events lived by people like ourselves. Carlin's take on the human experience of the Apache wars is incredibly insightful and does justice to the experience of all sides. Similarly, Carlin's episode on "History under the Influence" legitimately raises the question of whether history is not so much written by the winners as by those who were somewhat less under the influence of drugs and alcohol so that they were able to win.

Carlin's most recent episode is an interview with Victor Davis Hanson. It's well-worth listening to because Carlin asks intelligent questions and Hanson isn't afraid to inform his views by the deep wellsprings of the Western Canon.

One comment by Hanson resonates with one of the "10 politically incorrect" things he mentioned in the article I linked to in the previous post. In that article he wrote:

5. California is now a valuable touchstone to the country, a warning of what not to do. Rarely has a single generation inherited so much natural wealth and bounty from the investment and hard work of those more noble now resting in our cemeteries--and squandered that gift within a generation. Compare the vast gulf from old Governor Pat Brown to Gray Davis or Arnold Schwarzenegger. We did not invest in many dams, canals, rails, and airports (though we use them all to excess); we sued each other rather than planned; wrote impact statements rather than left behind infrastructure; we redistributed, indulged, blamed, and so managed all at once to create a state with about the highest income and sales taxes and the worst schools, roads, hospitals, and airports. A walk through downtown San Francisco, a stroll up the Fresno downtown mall, a drive along highway 101 (yes, in many places it is still a four-lane, pot-holed highway), an afternoon at LAX, a glance at the catalogue of Cal State Monterey, a visit to the park in Parlier--all that would make our forefathers weep. We can't build a new nuclear plant; can't drill a new offshore oil well; can't build an all-weather road across the Sierra; can't build a few tracts of new affordable houses in the Bay Area; can't build a dam for a water-short state; and can't create even a mediocre passenger rail system. Everything else--well, we do that well.

In the Carlin interview, Hanson observes that there are many who decry the achievements that our ancestors left us, but use them every day and refuse to do without them. San Franciscans, for example, will decry the destruction of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, but would never dream of doing without the water that makes San Francisco possible.

Grace on the cheap and hypocrisy abound.

It seems that in the past, people would point to some human construction - a dam or a highway - and proudly point out that they were part of building this impresive and useful thing. Today, to the contrary, people proudly point out the absence of something that could be useful to the population and so how they were part of not building it.

Obviously, there is a lot to be said about conservation, but the negative orientation carries a lot of anti-human implications that have never existed in any prior successful civilization.

The "Non-diverse" disease

A Canadian student organization has dropped its fund raising efforts for victims of cystic fibrosis because it "only affects white people and primarily men."

While if it's only white people and mostly men, then screw 'em.

Wesley Smith writes:

I've been to Canada often. I like Canadia. I know these kinds of attitudes don't come from the water. They come from political correctness that subverts reason and the ability to think critically.

It would seem that the point of raising funds ought to be to help a suffering fellow human being, and that everyone is equal in suffering, but this politically correct idiocy seems to argue that not all suffering merits compassion.