June 24, 2004

REASSURING NEWS FROM THE RELIGION OF PEACE

How long will political correctness prevent us from naming our enemy? Here's how so-called "moderate" Muslim spokesmen are reacting to the televised beheadings of innocents by cowardly savages shouting "Allahu Akbar".:

According to Sam Hamod, former director of the Islamic Center in the District who is now a lecturer and writer near San Diego"...If they are going to have an execution, the [executioner] must say a prayer and ask for forgiveness from God for what he is doing and pray for the person's soul being killed," he said. "You can't do it like the idiots on TV. The right thing to do is slit the person's throat, not cut off the entire head..."
See the rest of the Koranic exegesis here.

June 22, 2004

TORTURING SADDAM

        Ignoring the Geneva Convention, U.S. interrogators have utilized a prohibited and diabolical form of torture to extract information from Saddam Hussein. Obtaining permission from Sonny Mehta at Knopf, they connected Mr. Hussein by earphones to an endlessly looped audio tape of Bill Clinton reading his memoirs. After the very first paragraph--"Early on the morning of August 19, 1946, I was born under a clear sky after a violent summer storm to a widowed mother in the Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, a town of about six thousand in southwest Arkansas, thirty-three miles east of the Texas border at Texarkana. My mother named me William Jefferson Blythe III after my father, William Jefferson Blythe Jr., one of nine children of a poor farmer in Sherman, Texas, who died when my father was seventeen. According to his sisters, my father always tried to take care of them, and he grew up to be a handsome, hardworking, fun-loving man. He met my mother at Tri-State Hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1943, when she was training to be a nurse. Many times when I was growing up, I asked Mother to tell me the story of their meeting, courting, and marriage. He brought a date with some kind of medical emergency into the ward where she was working, and they talked and flirted while the other woman was being treated. On his way out of the hospital, he touched the finger on which she was wearing her boyfriend's ring and asked her if she was married. She stammered "no"—she was single. The next day he sent the other woman flowers and her heart sank. Then he called Mother for a date, explaining that he always sent flowers when he ended a relationship..." Mr. Hussein was screaming for mercy. He pleaded (through a translator): "Please, I beg you, feed me through the woodchipper and put an end to the horror." The highly trained interrogators fought against their natural inclination to sympathize with his torment, but in accordance with their training reminded him of the novels he'd inflicted on his own helpless countrymen. He argued that his own fantasies were clearly labeled as fiction, while Mr. Clinton's fictions were recounted as historical fact. "I beg you", he pleaded "do anything to my body, but this mental torture is unbearable."
        Interrogators continued the pressure until, holding up, and threatening to read aloud a copy of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, Mr. Hussein finally cracked.

June 21, 2004

CONFRONTING THE U.N.

The United Nations exists on two planes: 1)reality and 2) fantasy. Professor Anne Bayefsky had the courage to confront the latter with the former. While it prattles of peace and human rights, it promotes fanatical hatred and genocide. Ms. Bayefsky went to the heart of darkness, the UN itself and spoke truth to power. The entire speech should be read here.

"...The U.N. has become the leading global purveyor of anti-Semitism--intolerance and inequality against the Jewish people and its state.

Not only have many of the U.N. members most responsible for this state of affairs rendered their own countries Judenrein, they have succeeded in almost entirely expunging concern about Jew-hatred from the U.N. docket. From 1965, when anti-Semitism was deliberately excluded from a treaty on racial discrimination, to last fall, when a proposal for a General Assembly resolution on anti-Semitism was withdrawn after Ireland capitulated to Arab and Muslim opposition, mention of anti-Semitism has continually ground the wheels of U.N.-led multilateralism to a halt..."

June 20, 2004

MUST READING FOR OSAMA BIN LADEN

     Bill Clinton's much hyped memoirs are already #1 on Amazon. What did we expect? The perfect representative of our therapeutic culture, Bill Clinton, turns out enough platitudinous psycho-babble to fill 937 pages. He is throughout, the noble victim- betrayed, disrespected and misunderstood. He's proud though, because he cared. He loved us, perhaps too much. In the end, this charming psychopath managed to avoid being expelled from office, while America slept through the roaring 90's. Bill Clinton played Gatsby while our enemies plotted to kill us. We should have no fear, however, for Mr. Clinton has the answer. He knows what to do. Our enemies are very angry and we know that anger is pathological. Anger is a maladaptive reaction to childhood mistreatment and frustration, and therefore we should empathically understand our adversaries. "I'm hoping that by writing this book, I'll make other people feel free to let go of their anger and resentment and not be afraid to admit what they've done wrong," Mr Clinton tells Time. Thanks so much Bill; let's tell that to the Islamo-Nazis who are beheading Americans. If only we could get them to "let go of their anger and resentment..." Perhaps Bill Clinton could send a copy to Osama bin Laden.

June 19, 2004

NOT IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

        In yesterday's speech to soldiers at Ft. Lewis, President Bush had a message to the handwringing appeasers at the NYTimes Editorial Board. Describing our efforts in Iraq he said: "...At the same time that we're helping the Iraqis bring the terrorists to justice, we're helping the Iraqi people to rebuild the basic infrastructure of their country. This is tough work. It's hard work. It's hard work to go from a society terrorized by a tyrant to a free society. But we have done this kind of work before. I want you to listen to how The New York Times described conditions in Germany in November, 1946. This was 18 months after the fall of Berlin. "Germany is a land in an acute stage of economic, political and moral crisis. The basic elements of recovery and peace are lacking. European capitals are frightened by the prospect of a German collapse. In every military headquarters, one meets alarmed officials doing their best to deal with the consequences of the occupation policy they admit has failed..."

        Guess what part of this speech was not reported in the NYTimes?

June 17, 2004

JOE LIEBERMAN, DEMOCRATIC FOSSIL

It's unfortunate that Joe Lieberman sold his soul to Al Gore and the Demo-appeasers. His wise words now, fall on deaf ears amongst his fellow democrats, and worse, sound hypocritical to those of us who once identified with the party of Roosevelt, Truman and Henry Jackson. But that was a long, long time ago. Still, Lieberman's words are a nostalgic reminder of a vanished age, when liberalism was more than a self-flattering pose.
"...What we are fighting for in Iraq and around the world is freedom. What we are fighting against is an Islamic terrorist totalitarian movement which is as dire a threat to individual liberty as the fascist and communist totalitarian threats we faced and defeated were in the last century..." See the rest here.

THE WAR WITHIN

Michael Moore is a hero to those who believe that defeating George Bush is the most important goal of the war on terror. Apparently they share that goal with the noble idealists of Hezbollah: Moore's latest, "Fahrenheit 9/11 gets help offer from Hezbollah" "...According to Screen International, the UAE-based distributor Front Row Entertainment has been contacted by organisations related to the Hezbollah in Lebanon with offers of help..."

The war declared on us by Islamo-Nazis is being fought on many battlefields, not just in the steaming deserts of the Middle East. Our enemies know that they can count on a certain number of our aggrieved wordsmith intellectuals, to rally around the totalitarian utopian, anti-American cause. Listen to the 9-11 commissioners and hear the truth of Cicero's observation two millenia ago.:

''A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.''
--Marcus Tullius Cicero 42B.C

SULLLIVAN CONTEST UPDATE

        Back in March Horsefeathers announced a contest to predict the date on which Andrew Sullivan's staunch post 9-11 support for President Bush would give way to an endorsement of John Kerry. Well, we thought the day had come and were expecting to name a winner when Sullivan explained in the current issue (May 11) of The Advocate that: "...it’s time to say something very clearly: Bush’s endorsement of antigay discrimination in the U.S. Constitution itself is a deal-breaker. I can’t endorse him this fall. Like many other gay men and women who have supported him, despite serious disagreements, I feel betrayed, abused, attacked..." We carefully read the rest of the article and...still no endorsement of John Kerry. As the song says: "Breaking up is hard to do", so it looks like it will take a bit longer for the expected endorsement.

June 16, 2004

BOOK REVIEW: THE RIGHT NATION

The war declared on us by Islamo-Nazi totalitarians forces us, once again, to be clear about what makes us Americans. To that end, friend of Horsefeathers, Richard K. Munro, reviews THE RIGHT NATION, by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge.:

THE RIGHT NATION by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge is a worthy, timely and ambitious book. The authors try to explain the nature of American conservatism, its unique nature, its current ascendancy, its future. These English gentlemen do a reasonably good job but I do not rate this book with Lord Bryce’s American Commonweath or Tocquevilles’ Democracy in America.

THE RIGHT NATION is at its best when it deals with current history. The authors display some understanding of what makes Texas and the American heartland tick, though I got the impression they never attended an American sporting event, barbecued, pulled a trigger of a gun or skinned a deer. The authors are strictly first class hotel Englishmen with soft hands. I found their sympathy for gay rights repetitive, predictable, very fashionably European, and frankly tiresome. They understand that Liberalism is intellectually bankrupt and in retreat but do not link this to the cult of childlessness and abortion rights of the Sangerites and the healthy demography of family oriented religious conservatives who out breed “pro-choice” liberals two or three to one.

The scope of THE RIGHT NATION is broad. Their basic thesis derives from Turner- that the conditions of America and her frontier helped shape her character and the “conservative” movement. The authors, following Edmund Burke, characterize traditional conservatism as being based on six principles

1) Suspicion of the power of the state, though I believe it would be better to characterize this as a belief in limited government and the idea that the purpose of government is to protect individual rights which include property.

2) Preference for liberty over “equality”, by which I suppose the authors mean socialist “leveling”. I believe this is a mischaracterization of what most Americans believe is equality. Americans do not believe in equality of condition, just fairness. Americans have always understood liberty needs be a married woman, married, that is, to other values such as order, morality or rule of law.

3) Patriotism. Americans are patriotic but the authors appear mystified that a modern people could be so flag-loving and nationalistic. Loving the Marine Corps, the Airborne or “regiments” is not “obsessive” but necessary and honorable if one is to have a free country. Freedom is not free. Where they come from, concepts like the “regiment”, nationalism and patriotism are obviously passé (at least among the elites).

4) Belief in established institutions and hierarchies. Perhaps traditional conservatives have believed in something similar to this but I think it better to say a deep RESPECT for legitimate authority as well as a respect for traditional values. Reaganism showed respect but not subservience to man-made institutions which American conservatives are pragmatically willing to adapt and modernize and throw out if necessary for the good of society and the individual. American conservatives are not dinosaurs but survivors, “men of the west”, looking towards the future and adapting to new challenges and new circumstances.

5) A pessimistic backward looking pragmatism. The authors are right when they say Reaganism and American conservativism is not pessimistic at all but confident and optimistic. Americans believe their Constitution will give them ordered change and reform not utopianism, anarchy and revolution

6) Elitism, or the belief that certain groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority of intellect, or financial resources. The authors of THE RIGHT NATION are correct when they characterize Americans as essentially equalitarians who have a deep distrust of elitism, inherited privilege be it Ivy League or Affirmative Action. No American would ever stand for an educated “clerisy” to tell him what to do or what to believe, hence the populist revolt against the liberal quasi-socialist establishment of the interlocking Ivy League and Washington elites.

There are historical errors in THE RIGHT NATION. The very proud American by choice, J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, author of Letters from an American Farmer, was not a “visiting Frenchman.” The authors write “in the decades after its birth the new republic sided with revolutionary France”; the authors never seem to have heard of Washington’s Proclamation of Neutrality and Adams’ undeclared naval war with France. The authors also say the USA has never had a “left-wing government”. If by that they mean we have never experienced a communist take-over they are right, but men (and women) of the left have ruled cities, states and presided over the federal government.

If there is a villain in the book it is Attorney General John Ashcroft who is unfairly compared to Oliver Cromwell. The authors do not mention the integrity and hard work that even critics of Ashcroft have noticed in his administration of the Justice Department. They are more concerned with Ashcroft’s personal Puritanism than with Bin Laden and his Islamofascist movement which is mentioned only a few times. This will make liberals happy but personally I am not worried about being dragged into Mr. Ashcroft’s church and being deprogrammed anytime soon. I am worried about Americans (and their friends) being blown up and murdered and Ashcroft seems to be doing a good job of stopping the bad guys.

They worry about the terrorists in Guantanamo but never seem to have heard of Executive Order 9066, the Korematsu case or the Quirin case. Strong executives like Lincoln and FDR have known that in times of war order and victory must trump civil liberties, if only temporarily, and in any case the civil liberties of citizens are not the same as rights enjoyed by spies, terrorists or foreign nationals.

Unlike Tocqueville or Lord Bryce, Micklethwaith and Wooldridge cannot quite achieve genuine objectivity. The influence of a pinkish Oxford education shows- in the authors’ ridicule of (“dumb”) Southerners who mistake their magazine for the “Communist”; it shows in their disdain for (‘big hair”, i.e. “dumb”) Fox television blondes whom they call “media vixens”, as well as in their quoting the anti-Semitic Marxian economist Werner Sombart, and making obscure references to Gosplan “the Soviet State planning Commission.” Stalin is mentioned once in the entire book, and Castro only twice, but Joseph McCarthy over and over because for many liberals he characterized American Conservativism in the 1950’s, though Eisenhower and Reagan not McCarthy or the John Birch Society more genuinely represented the American idea.

If we want to understand the appeal and essence of American neo-conservatism THE RIGHT NATION a flawed book. How can a book on American conservatism not even mention Abraham Lincoln, John Adams, Harry Jaffa and barely mention John Locke, Winston Churchill or Lord Acton ?

The authors are right when they say American conservativism is about ideas, and when they say Hayek is the “John Calvin” of the new individualistic American nationalism- which is something more than “conservatism”. At its heart America is about FREEDOM and the values of the Declaration and the US Constitution: life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. The power and appeal of American conservatism is in its deeply held belief that America is one nation, with liberty and justice for all, under God, only then under the Constitution, because there is always a higher law and the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.

Richard K. Munro
Teacher of history, English and Spanish
Arvin High School, Arvin, California
The Red-Bricked Nook of the Many Welcomes

June 15, 2004

TOM FRIEDMAN'S FAVORITE SAUDI ROYAL EXPLAINS: GUESS WHO'S TO BLAME

Saudi prince: Zionism to blame for terror attack
Official says Israel, supporters share bin Laden's objective

By Lisa Myers
Senior investigative correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 7:56 p.m. ET June 15, 2004

Last month, an attack on contractors at the Saudi oil facility in Yanbu killed six Westerners, two of them Americans. Senior Saudi officials told the world al-Qaida terrorists were to blame and al-Qaida claimed responsibility. But tape obtained by NBC News reveals that, inside Saudi Arabia, on Saudi television, Crown Prince Abdullah told a strikingly different story about who was to blame.

NBC News translated Abdullah's remarks from Arabic: “Zionism is behind it. It has become clear now. It has become clear to us. I don’t say, I mean... It is not 100 percent, but 95 percent that the Zionist hands are behind what happened.”
Other senior Saudi officials reaffirmed the claim that supporters of Israel — Zionists — were behind the terror attacks.

Prince Nayef, the Saudi Interior Minister said, “Al-Qaida is backed by Israel and Zionism.”
See the rest here.

June 14, 2004

ONCE AGAIN NOW: IT'S NOT A WAR ON TERROR

The P.C. insistence that we're in a "war against terror", continues to becloud the minds of our media and government elites and to weaken the resolve of the nation. It is as if Roosevelt had vowed to fight against Hitler because we needed to put an end to "blitzkriegs", and didn't bother to mention Nazism. Today our enemies seek to use terror to impose a theocratic Islamo-fascism every bit as barbaric and totalitarian as Nazism. (See Victor Hanson) And like Hitler, they're quite open about it. Here is the latest savage joy expressed at the murder of innocent "infidels" in Iraq.: Suicide Bomb Brings Carnage to Baghdad Street
"...As U.S. forces began arriving at the scene, Iraqi youths poured out from nearby alleys, some to hurl stones at them.
Dozens of people gathered around two of the vehicles targeted in the blast, jumping up and down on their roofs, hammering them with bits of debris and chanting: "There is no God but Allah. America is the enemy of Allah..."
See the full story here.

June 12, 2004

HORSEFEATHERS' HENNY-PENNY AWARD GOES TO...

Samuel P. Huntington, Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard and chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, must be a man who rarely smiles. You have only to scan the list of titles—perhaps a dozen—of which he is author or editor to know that the man is a cosmic worrier.

His earlier work, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, clearly boosted him to the very top of the pile of hypochondriacs of international affairs. He monitors every war cloud and every religious protest in the most far flung regions of the globe. He can tell you how many civil wars are going on at any given minute everywhere on earth. He attends to every cultural hiccough, every political belch, every population twitch, and entertains fearful scenarios of international ill health.

It is certainly a good thing that there are men about like Professor Huntington with such a worrisome nature, and such encyclopedic knowledge and scope. We need to be kept awake to the political catastrophes of future generations.

In his new book, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity, Professor Huntington takes the temperature of America’s psyche and finds the nation feverish and ready to fall apart.

Professor Huntington’s first task is to identify who we were as a nation, and how we got to be who we are now. From its origins in the hearts and minds of our eighteenth century founders America has been and continues to be an Anglo-Protestant culture; the latter is the central and lasting source of all of the component characteristics we call the American Creed.

Eighteenth century Protestantism should not be mistaken for WASP Episcopalianism, which is closer to Catholicism than the faith of our founding fathers. America is the child of the Reformation and the English Puritan Revolution. It was founded as a succession of Protestant fragments, a process that was underway in seventeenth century England even before Locke was born.

The American brand of Protestantism is rooted in dissent from established religion. This was noted by Edmund Burke: The Americans “are Protestants and of that kind which is most averse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion.”

Contrary to the common belief of the igno-historical liberal warrior, almost all the central ideas of what Huntington calls the American Creed—the essence of American identity—have their origins in our religious past: dissenting Protestantism. Our core beliefs entail the sacred rights of the individual, the people as a source of political power, government limited by law and the people, the people as a source of political power, a preference for local over national government, and the less government the better.

All of these are to be found in the principles and mores of Protestantism: the Protestant emphasis on individual conscience and responsibility; the work ethic and the responsibility of the individual for his own success or failure in life; congregational forms of church organization—all these fostered opposition to hierarchy and favored democratic government.

The American creed is the unique creation of a dissenting Protestant culture and it is the mechanism that has been ticking away since the eighteenth century, keeping things on track—until the sixties, that is. Beginning then, Huntington says, the principle beliefs that have kept America America began to be subverted by social and cultural trends like affirmative action and quota programs in schools and business; the rise of bilingualism; the substitution of multiculturalism for a sense of and interest in our national history; and most troubling of all a powerful tendency for new immigrants from the Latin American countries south of America to resist assimilation of American values, and form large, extensive communities with increasingly powerful voting blocs and pressure groups.

Professor Huntington is most worried about the challenge of Mexican immigration. Because of its contiguity, Mexico is a constant and increasing source of legal and illegal immigrants, who he feels neither share the American ethic nor want to. Hispanics in 2000 were 12% of the population and two thirds of those were Mexican. It is expected that by 2080 Hispanics will represent 25% of the population. They appear to be less interested than immigrants of the past in assimilating and dispersing into America, but rather take comfort in the area of the country which was once Mexico. There they will settle, Professor Huntington frets, as Spanish speaking undigested communities transforming the American Creed into a Hispanic one. We will be changed from a people who say “Let’s roll!” to one that will say “Manana…manana…”

One can only admire Professor H for the depth and scope of his scholarship, but it is clear that the man suffers from a Cassandra complex. He seems at his most animated as he molds the facts he has collected, all individually plausible, into some catastrophic scenario which strains credulity. “Mexican-Americans, in turn, argue that the Southwest was taken from them by military aggression in the 1840s, and that the time for la reconquista has arrived. Demographically, socially, and culturally that is well under way.

“Conceivably this could lead to a move to reunite these territories with Mexico. That seems unlikely, but Professor Charles Truxillo of the University of New Mexico predicts that by 2080 the southwestern states of the United States and the northern states of Mexico will come together to form a new country, ‘La Republica del Norte.’ The basis for such a development exists in the surge of Mexicans northward and the increasing economic ties between communities on different sides of the border.”

Can you just imagine how the proposed name change from the Dallas Cowboys to the Durango Bandidos would go over? Or the change from Arizona Diamondbacks to the Pueblo Chihuahuas? Really, Professor.

It isn’t that Professor Huntington is wrong about all of the various threats to American identity—the rise of transnationalism amongst the elites, multiculturalism, anti-patriotic attitudes among liberal intellectuals, bilingualism. He is quite right about their existence and their opportunities for expansion. The problem is that he cannot resist over-generalizing into a state of Henny-Penny-The-Sky-Is-Falling panic and playing the futurologist. As the quotation above suggests Professor Huntington is no small-time thinker. He is addicted to making epochal predictions, seeing trends far into the future. Unfortunately, life is largely unpredictable over long periods of time.

In 1932 who could have told that the United States would be involved in a war in less than ten years later that would change the national configuration of the world? Who could have told in 1949 that an American would walk on the moon in 1969? Who would have said in 1981 that the Soviet Empire would be dead in 1991? Sorry, Professor, but, except for death and taxes, we’re lucky if we can predict tomorrow’s weather.

There’s a more serious problem with Professor Huntington’s view of the world. He tends to underestimate the powerful cyclical nature of things. Nature and human nature, when they encounter extreme situations, tend to react automatically in ways that will correct the extreme situation. That’s the way the stock and all other markets work. That is the way the human body works. That’s the way politics works. There are different names for this principle of self-correction depending on the context—the principle of homeostasis, the principle of constancy, the principle of regression to the mean—but they all describe the tendency in living beings to correct for extreme situations, whether these are caused by error or external factors.

Things don’t stay the same, Professor. When they get bad enough human beings will do something to change them for the better—you can bet on it.

A case in point is Graciela Diaz, an illegal immigrant from Jalisco, Mexico, who, if Professor Huntington’s predictions were true would be on welfare, draining American resources, speaking Spanish and encouraging her child to speak Spanish, living a life-style of Mexican manana. But somehow or other Ms. Diaz could not remain true to Professor Huntington’s stereotype, and today she earns $40,000 a year, is married, owns a hundred thousand dollar house with a two- car garage (that holds her two cars) in a gated community. She still speaks ungrammatical English, but her husband tells her daughter to do everything the teacher says because one day she’s going to be somebody. The Diazes want her to go to college and maybe law or architecture school.

Click here to find out how she proves Professor Huntington and his big ideas wrong.

America’s identity has been challenged since it began. We chose not to be a slave-holding nation; our intellectual elites have besieged us to become anarchists, communists, socialists, feminists, gay, and Lord knows what else. In the end we have remained remarkably like ourselves, and, no doubt, despite Professor Huntington’s dire warnings, we will continue to be US.

June 11, 2004

RONALD REAGAN AND GEORGE BUSH: HEDGEHOGS

What more is there to say about the Fortieth President of the United States, Ronald Wilson Reagan? Well, plenty. Many dead trees will surely be devoted to debating the merits and drawbacks of his policies. Pundits will argue over his ranking among the Presidents. One doesn't have to await the verdict of future historians, however, to assess the character and mind that animated Reagan and his Presidency. It takes nothing more than a reading of Isaiah Berlin's famous essay, The Hedghog and the Fox, (see excerpt below) to know that Reagan was a hedgehog and his hapless predecessor a fox. That same contrast can be found between our current President and his predecessor, Bill Clinton. His current rival, the ultra-nuanced Democrat John ForAgainst Kerry, is clearly in the line of his party's recent fox Presidents. Small wonder that in times of crisis such as our current World War IV, leadership comes from the central organizing vision of the hedgehogs.

The Hedgehog and the Fox - Isaiah Berlin (excerpt)
"There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing'. Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog's one defense. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision..."

June 10, 2004

HARVARD WELCOMES ENABLER OF MASS MURDER

The United Nations has been awfully busy over the years, passing anti-Israel resolutions. Meanwhile, millions of innocents have been murdered by Arab fanatics, while the U.N. did nothing and is doing nothing today. Actually, it's worse than that: the U.N.'s Secretary General appears to have been subsidizing his dinners at Rao's and Saville Row suits with payoff money from Saddam, money which condemned countless Iraqi children to starvation, disease and death. However, to the contemporary liberal mind, as embodied by our elite Ivy League faculties, a noble, utopian idea counts for more than actual living individuals. So while those human beings are being tortured and murdered, Kofi Annan is accepting an honorary degree from Harvard where he will address the graduating class, no doubt with high minded idealistic advice. Well, some have awakened from utopian dreams.

Annan's dishonor in Sudan
By Gloria White Hammond and Francis Bok

"Today, Harvard University will welcome UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as its commencement speaker and present him with an honorary degree. However, Annan's inaction in the face of genocide in Sudan is anything but honorable. The secretary general has failed to stand up to the Arab-dominated government of Sudan in its murderous campaign of ethnic cleansing, most recently against African Muslim tribes of Darfur in western Sudan, and for more than two decades against Christians and practitioners of traditional religions in southern Sudan.

The woeful negligence of the United Nations under Annan's watch is hauntingly familiar. In 1994, Annan was the UN undersecretary general for peacekeeping operations. He received credible information from UN forces in Rwanda about an impending extermination of Tutsi people. He failed to intervene. The result: 800,000 dead in 90 days.

In 1995, 7,000 Bosnian Muslims were massacred in Srebrenica -- a UN safe haven -- while UN troops looked on.

In 1997, Annan became secretary general. Throughout his term, the government of Sudan has committed what the US Congress has labeled "acts of genocide." Seeking to impose Sharia law on southern Sudan and gain access to its oil-rich land, the Khartoum regime in northern Sudan has led a brutal campaign for more than 20 years that has resulted in 2 million deaths and 4 million displacements. Tens of thousands of women and children have been enslaved in the north..."
See the rest here.

June 09, 2004

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME

“It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, longstanding concepts of ‘fair-play’ must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated and more effective methods than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.”---From a report on the CIA prepared by General James Doolittle for President Eisenhower in September 1954:

Mortal enemies are mortal enemies.

Hattip to Rita Kramer for Quote in The Book of Honor: The Secret Lives and Deaths of CIA Operatives
By Ted Gup (Anchor Books, 2001)