I'm old enough to recall the days in the late 1960s when people wore those trendy buttons that read: "Stop the Planet I Want to Get Off." And I will never forget that era's "educational" films of what life would be like in the year 2000. Played on clanky 16-millimeter projectors, they showed images of people walking down the streets of Manhattan with masks on, so they could avoid breathing the poison gases our industrial society was spewing.
The future seemed mighty bleak back then, and you merely had to open the newspapers for the latest story confirming how the human species was speeding down a congested highway to extinction. A group of scientists calling themselves the Club of Rome issued a report called "Limits to Growth." It explained that lifeboat Earth had become so weighed down with humans that we were running out of food, minerals, forests, water, energy and just about everything else that we need for survival. Paul Ehrlich's best-selling book "The Population Bomb" (1968) gave England a 50-50 chance of surviving into the 21st century. In 1980, Jimmy Carter released the "Global 2000 Report," which declared that life on Earth was getting worse in every measurable way.
So imagine how shocked I was to learn, officially, that we're not doomed after all. A new United Nations report called "State of the Future" concludes: "People around the world are becoming healthier, wealthier, better educated, more peaceful, more connected, and they are living longer." . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
10/05/2007 06:27 ||
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"People around the world are becoming healthier, wealthier, better educated, more peaceful, more connected, and they are living longer."
But, you don't understand. That doesn't sell print or airtime. We have to have a never ending stream of 'crisis' to keep the news entertainment industry in business. Hacks Producers and writers can't sell good copy cause it's beyond their mediocre means to tell a story.
#2
Ironically, one of the few futurists who did get a lot of what he predicted correct was Alvin Toffler, whose Future Shock and The Third Wave have been tremendously influential, if no longer given much attention by the public.
Starting out as an associate editor of Fortune magazine, his focus was on the social changes, reorganization and evolution of social patterns based on technology.
He and his wife, who write together, have actually been given credit for some innovative philosophical underpinnings in the West, Russia *and* China.
They not only were understood by a lot of people, but they coined new words and expressions that even if you didn't get the whole idea, conveyed a lot of it, so you could get the gist of what they were saying.
After looking a long time, I managed to get a copy of the short documentary "Future Shock", narrated by Orson Welles, that was almost required viewing for high school students in the US. It is still a fun movie, even if the actors are wearing futuristic versions of 1970s clothing.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of the world's most prominent voices against radical Islam. A brave Muslim-born woman who fled oppression in her native Somalia, Ms. Hirsi Ali spoke and published widely and won a seat in the Parliament of her adopted home in the Netherlands. You'd think that the proudly multicultural Dutch would be proud of her. You'd be wrong.
Some lawmakers have called for a parliamentary emergency session to settle the latest raging dispute over Ms. Hirsi Ali. Although she is the Salman Rushdie of the post-9/11 era, The Hague now refuses to pay for her bodyguards. Ms. Hirsi Ali has lived with a death sentence hanging over her since a fanatical Muslim murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who made a short movie based on a script by Ms. Hirsi Ali, and vowed to kill her too. The threats haven't stopped. But Dutch-funded protection will end because Ms. Hirsi Ali moved to Washington last year. She came back to the Netherlands Monday to keep her protection detail while she works out new arrangements for her future security.
It's the latest of many indignities. The government says it shouldn't have to pay for her bodyguards while she is abroad. Ms. Hirsi Ali hardly left Holland voluntarily. The 24-hour surveillance in recent years made it difficult for her to carry out her duties as a member of Parliament. Then her neighbors successfully sued to evict Ms. Hirsi Ali from her apartment; they claimed her presence depressed real-estate prices and put them in danger. Ms. Hirsi Ali didn't relish going back to the army barracks and prisons where she first sought shelter after the Van Gogh murder. In the final kick in the shins, the government considered revoking the then-MP's citizenship for misstatements she had made -- and admitted to years earlier -- to gain asylum in Holland in 1992. So Ms. Ali took a job at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. The cost of protecting her in the U.S. aren't known, but the fight over it is unseemly. Then again, the Dutch haven't shown great sympathy for a writer and politician whose only crime was to exercise her right to free speech to challenge the Islamists.
At any rate, Ms. Hirsi Ali is getting the message. Last week, she secured her Green Card allowing her to stay and work in the U.S. She plans to raise private funds there for her protection. We'll see whether Americans prove more generous than the country that first gave her refuge.
#1
I recommend she move to SE VA/NE NC, in the Chesapeake/Moyock area. Real estate is pretty reasonable there, not far from the beach, and Blackwater may be able to loan her some pretty safe office space on their campus ...
I think most of us vaguely remember her, the gal who told Al Gore to wear earth tones and to be macho.
If her latest book keeps rising through the US bestseller lists, then the Bush administration should not just be afraid, but very afraid.
I doubt Bush is losing any sleep. Nobody has to tell him to be macho.
Wolf is calling for American citizens to rise up in a bloggers' revolution to push back what she calls "a fascist shift" in her homeland.
"Fascist" to Naomi and her ilk means Republicans. I don't see Republican storm troopers marching around thumping people, though I do see a lot of masked anarchists conductng Kristallnachten every time there's a major summit conference, and I do see a lot of Goebbels-like propaganda produced by the Democrats, to include the book under discussion.
She compares the present situation in the US with the early days of Mussolini, Stalin and, if you're still not convinced, Hitler.
Don't they all? Nobody ever compares the current situation in the U.S. with, for instance, northern Italy when the condotierri were in their heyday, or 1688 England, or Russia during the 17th century. It's always "Help, help! The Nazis are coming!" It's never "Help, help! The Sforzas are coming!" or "Help! Help! The Papists are coming!" or "Help! Help! It's Charles XII!" My imagination's not remotely flexible enough to produce any kind of correspondence between the U.S. of today the Italy that gave rise to Mussolini. Bush as pre-Yezhovschchina Stalin is simply ludicrous.
The End of America (Scribe, $24.95) is as much a personal story of how Naomi Wolf's life has changed since September 11, 2001, as it is her country's.
Maybe she should serialize it in Modern Romances.
From 2002, Wolf became a critic of the Bush administration.
The way that sentence is constructed, it implies that prior to 2002 she was a Bush supporter or at least neutral. In fact, she was a Dem partisan and an advisor to Al Gore, just not one of his better advisors. Perhaps that was because of her penchant for hysteria. Or maybe it was her habit of finding Nazis under her bed.
Her view was that even dissent was part of being American, part of the great democracy that thrived on argument and openness.
Ohfergawdsake. Dissent for the sake of dissent is mere carping. It has no intrinsic virtue. It is not brave, especially in a society where it's not going to land you in jug. Even in a society where it'll land you in jug, though, it's stoopid to dissent with no reason. If you were a Sov, and you dissented from, for instance, the Bol'shoi Opera, or the running of the Trans Siberian Railway, or the launch of Sputnik, then maybe you deserved a few weeks in Lubyanka.
At first, it was Muslim men boarding planes who encountered problems.
There was no problem for the community at large, mind you. Just the mild curiosity over whether the guys with the turbans were gonna fly whatever plane they were boarding into another building full of screaming innocents.
Now, the force of security measures are being felt by people such as Wolf: white, Jewish and female. She believes she is being targeted because she has become a critic of the administration.
Sounds like she's suffering from delusions of adequacy. And maybe over-categorization. White, Jewish males aren't feeling it, obviously; only the females. Oriental Jewish females aren't. White Episcopalian females certainly aren't feeling it, though white Seventh Day Adventist females might be. I don't have a reading on the Samoan Lutheran females or Cambodian Lesser Vehicle Buddhist males yet, but they're in the mail.
She found that most times she travelled through airports (nine out of 10, she calculates) she would be taken aside for questioning. Then she discovered she was on a watch list. After one trip, she discovered her suitcase had been opened and a letter from Homeland Security placed next to her computer.
Right. If I was gonna search her baggage for incriminating evidence of whatever it is she thinks she might be suspected of, I'd leave a letter next to her computer to cover my tracks.
Wonder if she framed the letter ...
My wife got the same letter last time she flew. It said "This bag was opened by Homeland Security". Wonder if I better keep an eye on her.
She heard that 250,000 Americans had been sent secret letters telling them they were under national security investigation and that they could not discuss the letters with anyone.
250,000 Americans have received secret letters that they're not supposed to discuss with anyone. Right. And they all took the warning seriously, except for Naomi Wolf, who's too Brave to keep her mouth shut.
She says security officials are beginning to walk through airports yelling "Freeze!" when they spot someone they consider suspicious.
"Really. They do. I seen it!"
People are increasingly being taken to holding cells at airports for interrogation.
"Another one, Schultz! Get me my truncheon!"
"Jawohl, mein Süpervisör!"
Wolf began to study the lead-up to dictatorships: the laws, language and tactics of Italy in the '20s; Hitler's National Socialists in the 1930s; East Germany in the '50s; Czechoslovakia in 1968; Chile in 1973; China in the '80s. "What was clear is that there is a blueprint for closing down a democracy and that Hitler studied Mussolini, Stalin studied Hitler. These guys all learned from each other." She found 10 common steps to the suspension of a democracy, then started ticking off those occurring in the US.
The ten points are mercifully not enumerated in the text...
The US is obviously not where Italy, Germany, Czechoslovakia or Chile were, but an "incremental process" is under way.
It's perfectly visible to people with the right kind of training, if you look at it from just the right angle...
She invokes the Founding Fathers, who saw tyranny as eternal but democracy as "vanishingly fragile".
The Founding Fathers were pretty dismissive of democracy, not having a lotta trust in the demos. They favored a republic, and for pretty good reason. Having dumped the requirement for voters to be land owners, thereby relieving them of the requirement to have an investment in the nation, the republic's becoming more evanescent by the day. Naomi's not bitchng and moaning about that, though.
The book doesn't hold back.
Neither does a 3-year-old having a temper tantrum...
"It is hard to think of another policy goal that this administration has pursued with such single-minded focus as it has legalised torture," she writes.
There's a difference between torture and rough treatment. However, if they need anybody to take a welding torch to various parts of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad or Ramzi bin al-Shibh, or Abu Zubaydah, I'm available.
"This elaborate push to torture brown people to confess to crimes they didn't commit makes political sense — even though it should make the moral sense recoil."
What the hell "brown" people is she talking about? Are the Ecuadorians involved? Surely she's not talking about Ramzi? He's a Yemeni Arab. Arabs are similar to Italians and Greeks and Spaniards in overall appearance, despite the obvious amount of inbreeding that went into producing him. Keep their mouths shut and you can't tell 'em apart. KSM is an ethnic Baloch, if I recall, which is not a "little brown man" but a primitive white guy with a turban and an AK, kinda like the Bugtis. Abu Zubaydah's a Paleostinian, another of those Mediterranean types. So precisely which bad guyz is she referring to? And who told Naomi they didn't do it? Weasley Clark? Al Gore?
Wolf discovered many other critics of the administration were on the watch list, including one of America's leading constitutional scholars, and two elderly women who run an anti-war movement.
There's paragraph after paragraph of this claptrap. It seems to go on forever. Naomi apparently lacks an original bone in her body. Her arguments, especially as interpreted by the writer, are specious. Or maybe the word I'm looking for is "tendentious." Or even "tedious." The whole article, and Naomi's book with it, are useless except as a snapshot of what the political atmosphere's degenerated to since 9-11. Or maybe since the McKinley administration.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/05/2007 00:00 ||
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...her penchant for hysteria.
I read The Beauty Myth. I believe I pronounced it "the biggest pile of tripe since Chariots of the Gods." (Actually, I kind of liked Chariots of the Gods.)
I expected The Beauty Myth to say something along the lines of "Gals, you're being played for saps." Instead it was more, "Oh, you poor dears! You weak, helpless, mindless creatures are being lied to by Big Beauty! What ever will we do??" Phooey.
"Another one, Schultz! Get me my truncheon!"
The everyday truncheon, Herr Oberst, or the double-wide?
IIUC, it's exactly the reverse; not only had uncle joe an hand in propping up uncle adolf, but the nazis modelled their early concentration camps on the gulag, which was up and running long before them, and ditto for the political police. Like it or not, but stalin was the first and the worst of the two, ultimately, when hitler barely got to power, the ruskie already had something like 10-12 millions deaths on his resume.
Not that I am fond of Uncle Joe but you have to correlate with time in power and population (it is difficult to kill lots of people when you are dictator of, say, the Fiji Islands or Luxembourg°; Stalmin had much more of both.
Also there is a a special horror in Hitler's crimes: no matter what you did good or bad, you were going to Auschwitz for the mere fact of being born from the wrong race. No escape. With Stalin you could at least try to cheer at his speeches and feign to believe that Soviet Union was a parsdise. And new borns weren't sent to Gulag.
Now Stalin killed more people but Hitler was the Antechrist incarnated.
#8
"What was clear is that there is a blueprint for closing down a democracy and that Hitler studied Mussolini, Stalin studied Hitler. These guys all learned from each other."
Translation: I always resented older generations for having the cache of victimhood more so than me, and now's my chance to claim equal victim status and the street cred that goes with it.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
10/05/2007 5:38 Comments ||
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"Help! Help! It's Charles XII!"
Best laugh of the morning--and a righteous fisking, to boot!
Posted by: Mike ||
10/05/2007 6:06 Comments ||
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Wolf is calling for American citizens to rise up in a bloggers' .....cloggers revolution to push back what she calls "a fascist shift" in her homeland
#11
It should also be pointed out that this may be simply a continuation of Ms Wolf's embarrassingly public midlife crisis/mini-breakdown from a couple of years back.
In a span of a few weeks, she was seen groping a disgusted David Horowitz on a cable panel discussion, and writing a bizarre article in which she claimed that young men's preference for sexual variety and women with trimmed/coiffed nether regions was some type of oppression and that all men should just get down on their knees, be supremely arounsed, and thank G*d for the sight of a naked woman (read, Naomi's nakedness) regardless of her state of hygiene, hirsuteness, or sexual adventurousness.
Insecure much?
I guess if women in general and Naomi in particular aren't in absolute control and making the rules in every situation, that's the same as fascism (/sarcasm off).
Posted by: no mo uro ||
10/05/2007 6:16 Comments ||
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At first, it was Muslim men boarding planes who encountered problems.
It's interesting that Ms. Wolf picks this as evidence of creeping fascism. I flew on a lot of planes not long after 9/11, and I've never seen finer evidence of participatory democracy than the looks exchanged among passengers on those flights: 7A: You see him? 7D: Yeah, I see him. 8D: If this sumbitch twitches he's taking the emergency exit. Nobody said a word out loud, but George Washington would have been proud.
Posted by: Matt ||
10/05/2007 8:07 Comments ||
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#14
Why do so many on the left suffer from such deep Freudian projection?
"Mommy, Tommy hit me."
"No fair, you hit me first."
Still haven't "progressed" much beyond that, have they.
#16
Well, if I can say something in her defense, she did have one clear and shining moment of mostly-sanity in "Fire with Fire", in which she argued that doctrinaire hard-line capital "F" feminism had turned into something ugly.man-hating and controlling of other womens' lives in the name of so-called female solidarity.
She argued that women should stop the hell thinking of themselves as poor widdle abused victims - that we are strong, confident and pretty damned diverse (in political views, religon, economic outlooks, etc) and should start acting like grownups.
It was a bit of fresh air, actually. I don't know what happened to her after that; changed meds, maybe. Or perhaps the minions of doctrinaire Feminism put a horse head in her bed.
#18
Not that I am fond of Uncle Joe but you have to correlate with time in power and population (it is difficult to kill lots of people when you are dictator of, say, the Fiji Islands or Luxembourg°; Stalmin had much more of both.
Yah, but the only big difference there is that Stalin was a successful imperialist while Hitler was a failed one. It's not like Stalin woke up one morning and said "All these millions of people! What will I do with them?!?" He worked to gain and keep control of that large population.
All of us who recognize that she is amongst those comparatively few "citizens" who feel Dead Set Entitled to Run America.
Fred: I think most of us vaguely remember her, the gal who told Al Gore to wear earth tones and to be macho.
Color her Bozo.
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
10/05/2007 10:26 Comments ||
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So why hasn't Naomi been picked up yet by Bush's Blackwater goons and sent to some kinda camp in the all new facist America for letting everybody in on "the secret"?
Not a bad looking woman. But, then again, the crazy ones never looked it...
#22
What amazes me is how easy it would be for the Federal Government, or even some rogue element in the government to mess with her and have it look like an accident. I'm not even talking assassination, books are often published in Singapore and replacing pages to make her look the fool would seem fairly easy if you ask me.
Yet the proto-fascist state sits back and watches her book go up the best seller list. Well if we're fascists, or fascist wanna-bes we're not very freaking good at it I can tell you that.
I think the left has real trouble understanding that their message is unacceptable to most people and thus they don't always win elections.
I call BS on this one. China was well on it's way to DOOOM long before the 80's. Maybe she's trying to correlate the "rise" of communism there to Tiannamen Square???
Posted by: BA ||
10/05/2007 14:11 Comments ||
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#24
Oh, and another thing:
Also there is a a special horror in Hitler's crimes: no matter what you did good or bad, you were going to Auschwitz for the mere fact of being born from the wrong race. No escape. With Stalin you could at least try to cheer at his speeches and feign to believe that Soviet Union was a parsdise. And new borns weren't sent to Gulag.
A lot of what Stalin did (oh, for instance, the artificial famines in Ukraine, or the deportation to Siberian camps of the entire population of Chechnya) looks racially motivated if you ask me.
BTW, about half the population of Chechnya survived the experience.
#25
"Apparently the dark night of fascism is always descending on America and landing on Naomi Klein."
Yeah, I'm old enough to remember the dark night of fascism descending several times over the decades, strangely coinciding with every time a Republican was elected president. It's a little like that clock that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists had. They were always pushing it a little closer to midnight, since Armageddon was always just around the corner. But Armageddon never came and eventually it got so close to midnight they couldn't show it moving any closer, so they had to back it up some.
Posted by: moody blues ||
10/05/2007 15:32 Comments ||
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This is just more cheerleading for the left. They're working themselves up for the Rage(tm) next year.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
10/05/2007 18:21 Comments ||
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#28
Fascism? What's her working definition? In Mussolini's infamous definition of the ideological concept in the Enciclopedia Italiana he wrote, "The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing, outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State - a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values - interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole of a people."
Fascism is secular islam. The President verbally attacked "Islamofascism" only once, then bowed to CAIR/ISNA correctitude. I don't treat Islamofascism as invective; it is the ideology of the worst menace ever to threaten Western Civilization. And the menace is compounded when the enemy has Fifth Columnists like Wolf-Bitch.
Regarding yesterday's poll data showing that 1 in 5 Democrats polled actually thinks the world would be better off if America lost the war in Iraq, I said that my first reaction was, "Well if that's so, then why aren't 4 in 5 Democrats trying to win the damned thing?"
My friend Bruce Kesler sent an e-mail that warrants reproducing in full here without any additional commentary.
You ask, Steve, "Perhaps they're the new "Silent Majority"? Indeed they are, and will remain one until after the fact of winning, at which time they will again mostly be silent about their previous silence or anti-war words.
Mark Twain: "In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a brave and scarce man, hated and scorned. When the cause succeeds, however, the timid join him...for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."
Posted by: Mike ||
10/05/2007 12:09 ||
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These are Dems we are talking about. No matter what happens, they'll claim victory.
Stephen Colbert, whose turn as a satirical ultra-conservative TV host entertains Comedy Central audiences nightly, was trying his darnedest to understand the arguments made in his guest's book. So, brow knitted, he turned to John Mearsheimer, co-author of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, on Tuesday night's broadcast. "You say that the Israel lobby was influential in helping push for war with Iraq. Is that because the Israeli lobby knew there were so many pro-Israeli forces ready to take over in Iraq once Saddam fell?"
"No," Mearsheimer responded as the audience laughed. Colbert tried again. "How do they influence United States policy to make the United States the largest single supplier of arms - to Saudi Arabia? How does that benefit them?" The audience laughed again. Still perplexed, Colbert later asked whether the US should cut off support to Israel, to which Mearsheimer replied that the US should continue to help Israel whenever its existence was threatened.
So Colbert followed up: "If we're not going to cut off aid to them, should we at least stop sending them Christmas cards? Cause they never send them back. It's always just a snowy field and the word 'blessing.'" Rest at the link
#1
Another special moment was Monday's grandiose unveiling of (Saudi King) Abdullah's much-anticipated judicial reform program. It dramatically expands the size and number of tribunals and courts in Saudi Arabia, adds judges, and opens new avenues for justice in civil and business matters.
There is just one hiccup: The reform failed to tackle the reason for all the current problems; namely, that Saudi judges are not lawyers nor even students of civil law, but religious priests who must be graduates of Islamic theological schools. In other words, the same folks who gave you broken justice can now expand it into new areas such as business and women's rights.
The move leaves the keys to modernization in one of the richest countries, one sitting on nearly half the world's oil and natural gas reserves, and that has a thriving business community and a rapidly growing population of about 25 million men and women firmly in the hands of bearded, sandaled men whose only knowledge consists of arcane interpretations of the Koran.
#3
the grand mufti [or Grand Dragon], Sheik Abdul-Aziz bin Abdullah bin Muhammad al-Sheik, issued a fatwa decreeing that Saudi Muslims should not fight in other people's wars unless, of course, they are in "defense of Islam."
Since all efforts are directed towards the spread of islam and the defense of islam, they are at war with the rest of the world.
#4
But what really takes the cake in the Brotherhood's program, however, is its definition of who will arbitrate all laws and legislation: only "a committee of religious scholars as elders and guides" are qualified, the manifesto insists. And those "elders" are to be selected as you might have guessed by the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood (which itself is to be elected or chosen by none other than itself). There is no need to delve further into the entire 108-page document. If you've read Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kämpf," you have the idea.
The "nuts and bolts" of Muslim Brotherhood's plans for Egypt. And, the author appears to be Muslim (or at least, Arab) himself. Fatwa on the NY Post in 3, 2, 1... At least we have a REAL-LIFE connection to Hitler, instead of the lefties screaming Bush=Hitler.
Posted by: BA ||
10/05/2007 14:22 Comments ||
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It makes sense that it's 'dark'. And nothing will ever change that, seeing that it's the HQ of that putrid oily mess known as Islam.
Corruption, opression, dictatorship, terrorism are all nasty things to be sure, but they pale in comparison to Mecca and Medina.
#6
With reforms like this the 7,000 lash judgment just might get reduced to a humane 3,000 or so. And by the time these cretins find the 21st century it will be year 3000AD or so.
#7
Since all efforts are directed towards the spread of islam and the defense of islam, they are at war with the rest of the world.
Word, JohnQC. Remember folks:
In religious parlance, this use of force is called Jihad, and in the Quran it can be classified in two distinct categories:
Firstly, against injustice and oppression.
Secondly, against the rejecters of truth after it has become evident to them.
The first type of Jihad is an eternal directive of the Shariah. As stated, it is launched to curb oppression and injustice. The second type, however, is specific to people whom the Almighty selects for delivering the truth as an obligation. They are called witnesses to the truth; the implication being that they bear witness to the truth before other people in such a complete and ultimate manner that no one is left with an excuse to deny the truth.
Considering, as JohnQC so astutely notes, how everything non-Islamic in this entire world is viewed as "injustice and oppression" against Muslims, it is entirely justified to foreshorten the above definition to:
Jihad is an eternal directive of the Shariah
Our world will never be safe until shari'a law is buried deep in history's scrap heap.
#2
The way that Islam's febrile and lunatic gyrations don't just invite but literally mandate intense ridicule would be entirely pathetic in a more dignified culture instead of being so downright hilarious.
Keith Olbermann, MSNBCs answer to a question no one asked, declared this week that Im the worst person in the world. Worse than Kim Jong Il. Worse than the Burmese thugocracy. Worse than Paeleostinian suicide bombers. Worse than Michael Vick or Paris Hilton. Worse, even, than Keith Olbermann.
This is not as bad as it might seem. Its sort of like being called uncool by the asthmatic assistant recording secretary of the high-school chess team. Zing!
Im the worst person in the world the designation is apparently a nightly feature of Olbermanns show because during a Fox News interview about the current idiotic Rush Limbaugh flap, I said that conservatives dont actually question the patriotism of liberals, they merely call attention to the statements of liberals. . . .
Anyway, the point Id been trying to make was that liberals routinely and righteously condemn the questioning of anyones patriotism until they have a chance to do it themselves. For example, in the debates over the formation of the Department of Homeland Security and the passage of Patriot Act, Democrats accused George Bush and the GOP leadership of questioning Democrats patriotism. But they never did any such thing. Rather, Democrats asserted that Republican criticism of their opposition was tantamount to questioning their patriotism.
John Kerry was the all-time champ of this sort of thing. He routinely insinuated that criticisms of his positions on national defense were tantamount to McCarthyism. Indeed, like Johnny Carsons Carnac the Magnificent, Kerry could psychically predict the reaction before it happened. Addressing the Council on Foreign Relations, he prophesied, I know what the Bush apologists will say to this that it is unpatriotic to question, to criticize and to call for change.
This in itself is a backhanded way to question the patriotism of your opponents. After all, to liberals, Joe McCarthy is synonymous with un-American. So, by preemptively and wantonly declaring any criticism to be McCarthyite dirty pool, Democrats are questioning the patriotism of their opponents in order to silence dissent (they play a similar preemption game with charges of racism as well).
But Democrats did worse than merely question the patriotism of their opponents; they flat-out denied it. Sen. Bob Graham called Bushs war policy anti-patriotic at the core. Kerry dubbed Bushs creed of greed you guessed it unpatriotic.
Howard Dean, the nearly invisible chairman of the Democratic National Committee, used to get himself into those Im-turning-into-the-Hulk rages over the merest hint that Republicans questioned the patriotism of Democrats. But he saw nothing wrong with righteously proclaiming that John Ashcroft is no patriot. Hes a direct descendant of Joseph McCarthy.
It's even worse when they're talking to each other and don't think the rest of us are listening. Over at Kos or DU or RabidDogLake (and even in the comment sections at quasi-respectable places like TNR) there are innumerable references to "Likudniks" and the "PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel" and so forth--and you really don't want to see some of the stuff they say about "Jew" Lieberman's alleged loyalties.
And now with Rush Limbaugh, Democrats, starting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, are lining up to call the radio host unpatriotic and do whatever they can to discredit him.
Now, the fact that no serious person actually thinks Limbaugh really or intentionally called soldiers dissenting on the war phony doesnt matter to the Democrats. Rather, theyre just gleeful to play the pot to Limbaughs kettle. Never mind that its unfair and dishonest, never mind that what theyre doing is far closer to the McCarthyism they routinely denounce, never mind that such Limbaugh-lynching Democratic senators as John Kerry and Dick Durbin have suggested, respectively, that American troops are terrorizing kids in Iraq and are akin to the torture masters of Nazi Germany or Pol Pots mad regime.
All that matters is that Democrats get a free hand thank you, mainstream media to do what theyve spent years denouncing as the worst, lowest form of politics. And, unlike Republicans in most cases, the Democrats actually know they are lying. They just dont care.
But dont take my word for it. Im the worst person in the world.
Posted by: Mike ||
10/05/2007 11:21 ||
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#1
While the right hand is arguing with Mr. Limbaugh and consuming mountains of air time about what he said or not, what's the left hand doing?
#7
It is amazing to me that the left would even try this with Rush since it is well known that he supports the military and their mission. This is the same tactic that the Clintons attempted during the 92 election. They tried to start rumors that GHWB was a womanizer (like Wee Willie Winkie), but it didn't stick because it was obvious that this isn't who Bush is. Imagine another eight years of Clinton War Room.
I went out on a limb about a month ago and suggested, on the slimmest evidence, that Katie Couric could became a strong and brave new voice in the American media. And she has. Just not exactly the way I thought she might.
I thought then, when the leggy leightweight went to Iraq to establish her street cred, that she might actually emerge as the anti-Cronkite.
She alone among our nations premier news anchors recognized that progress in Iraq was the story of the hour, of the day, of the week, month, year and decade, and she went there. Then, she reported that undeniable progress was being made.
Since then, possibly chastened by her pals in New York and Washington for her heresy, shes backtracked considerably. . . . But thats not the issue here. What is remarkable is how Couric, seeking to transcend bimbohood and establish herself as a serious thinker, emerged as an honest voice among our nations premier news organizations. Couric is telling truths much of the media, guised in false claims of objectivity and fairness, is reluctant to admit overtly. Maybe its because she is a lightweight, a news neophyte promoted over her abilities, that shes willing to strip the emperor.
In fact, the presumption of Americas leading news media with its insistence that it represents just the facts, as though reporters are an alien priesthood dropped down among us to sagely observe with a sort of scientific objectivity may represent the greatest triumph of supernational multiculturalism in the United States. And Couric is its poster child. Because this is what else she said last week at the National Press Club:
The former Today show anchor traced her discomfort with the administrations march to war back to the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying we when referring to the United States and, even the shock and awe of the initial stages, it was just too jubilant and just a little uncomfortable.
Just a little uncomfortable may be a bit of an understatement. At the time of the invasion of Iraq, there were prominent news professionals loudly objecting to and questioning the ethics of embedding in U.S. military units, though they had no problem with the idea of reporters being posted to Baghdad to attend Iraqi propaganda sessions. Living among U.S. soldiers and advancing with them in combat against an undeniable evil was something that would challenge the objectivity of the press, which apparently has transcended not only national identity but even morality.
The world instead is something that must be observed from an amoral and relativistic perspective.
According to this concept the United States is not good or bad, not any better or worse than, say, Saddams Iraq, Ahmadinejads Iran or even al-Qaeda, whose murderous terrorist operatives, in the wake of marketplace bombings, are referred to as militants. In practice the theoretical equivalence vanishes; the United States is often represented as worse than those entities, with a greater intensity of focus on substantially less serious misdeeds the humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, or this discomfort at Guantanamo, for example, compared to mass slaughter of civilians by terrorist bombs, torture and beheadings in Iraq.
This distortion may be because, for the world citizens of the American press, their birthright has become an embarrassment they must deny.
So Id like to praise Couric, and encourage her to continue on this path, shoving her way out of the crowd of serious, sober-minded journalists who wouldnt dare admit such a thing as discomfort with saying we. It is good when leading voices in our nations news media admit freely they are uncomfortable with the trappings of citizenship, that their interests perhaps are not those of our nation. That those things make them just a little uncomfortable.
Posted by: Mike ||
10/05/2007 09:14 ||
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#1
Couric is on thin ice and knows it. She's hoping that although she can't get the acceptance of a broad audience she can get the acceptance of her peers (and thus the audience will be blamed for her shows failure).
#3
Late 1980's-1990's, PRE 9-11 AL BUNDY > "I'M AN AMERICAN - I'M SORRY". POST 9-11 in 2007, looks like AL BUNDY still has to apologize for being an American??? DURING 9-11???
I think my reading of the Middle Ages made me more politically conscious. I see the same people seeking power, and using the same techniques to keep power, whether it be propaganda, media control or religion.
We all learned in school about Pope Gregory VIIs canny use of the media, particularly his MTV-style illuminated books which employeed quick cuts and flashes of imagery and only took seven years to draw.
The one thing that is certain is that people don't change and the same untruths and reasons for going to war, for example, prevail now as they always did. In the late 14th century, Richard II tried to establish peace with France, but this flew in the face of the interests of those barons who made their money out of warfare, and who were adamantly opposed to Richard and who, in the end, managed to depose and murder him so that they could carry on making money despite the bloodshed and destruction. Nothing changes.
Well, if thats what Mr. Jones says, that must be so. Didnt have anything to do with undue taxation or the execution of his enemies, abolition of consulting bodies, succession issues, and generally irritation of the rest of the nobility. He wanted peace, and was killed, and so the war in Vietnam ground on for another oh, right.
I agree with Mr. Jones; Human nature is immutable, damn the luck although I suspect a great many of Mr. Jones prescriptions rely on its endless mutability but the nature and quality of societies change, which is why Tony Blair left office on his feet instead of being dragged into the public square to have his bowels unspooled, and Mr. Jones himself who believes Chaucer was assassinated for political reasons can speak his mind without fearing for his life. Especially since he took the right side on the matter of the Crusades those rude God-bothering popish maniacs blundering into the civilized gardens of Islam, ad so on.
What it is with these guys? You point out that America was the first nation to land on the moon, and they nod and say yes, well, the Sumerians first described the moons orbit 2000 years ago. Perhaps, but thats like saying that marrying Sophia Loren is an equal accomplishment to watching her walk across the street. Historical perspective is one thing. But nothing changes is a sad gust of defeat. Things change, all right. Just wait.
Posted by: Mike ||
10/05/2007 06:30 ||
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"Nothing Changes"
Reoccurring waves of the plague?
High level of birth and child mortality?
Average life expectancy?
Percentage of literacy in the general population?
Hunger as a constant companion dependent upon the vagaries of climate?
What constitutes our 'definition' of poverty?
Ability to rush needed supplies and help to any remote corner of the world in the event of a natural disaster averting death tolls that hit historically hundreds of thousands?
#3
Not only that, Proc, but it's all Bush's fault, ya see?
*PSSST, the plague was a Halliburton inspired conspiracy set up by Karl Rove and approved by Bush to wipe out those evil Muslims...oops, I mean Europeans..."
Posted by: BA ||
10/05/2007 14:16 Comments ||
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#5
A Fable
Two vultures were sitting in a tree. Suddenly all the animals starting running from forest. One vulture mangages to ask a rabbit what is going on?
The rabbit replied, "FLEE, for lives MAN is at WAR!"
The other vulture then said, "For thousands of years man has made war and only we vultures have proffited. Come my friend a feast awaits us."
As they flew toward thebattle they were vaporized by a 20KT nuclear weapon.
MORAL: In thousands of years, things change.
Roger Price
Posted by: bruce ||
10/05/2007 20:22 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
WHO'S afraid of Naomi Wolf? 
Wolf began to study the lead-up to dictatorships: the laws, language and tactics of Italy in the '20s; Hitler's National Socialists in the 1930s; East Germany in the '50s; Czechoslovakia in 1968; Chile in 1973; China in the '80s. "What was clear is that there is a blueprint for closing down a democracy and that Hitler studied Mussolini, Stalin studied Hitler. These guys all learned from each other." She found 10 common steps to the suspension of a democracy, then started ticking off those occurring in the US. 
