Obama's "rush to failure" leaves his backers with buyer's remorse.
By JAMES TARANTO
Blogress Megan McArdle was a strong supporter of Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, but now she is having doubts:
Having defended Obama's candidacy largely on his economic team, I'm having serious buyer's remorse. [Timothy] Geithner, who is rapidly starting to look like the weakest link, is rattling around by himself in Treasury. Meanwhile, the administration is clearly prioritized a stimulus package that will not work without fixing the banks over, um, fixing the banking system. Unlike most fiscal conservatives, I'm not mad at him for trying to increase the size of the government; that's, after all, what he got elected promising to do. But he also promised to be non-partisan and accountable, and the size and composition stimulus package looks like just one more attempt to ram through his ideological agenda without much scrutiny, with the heaviest focus on programs that will be especially hard to cut.
Nearly 60 million Americans might respond, "Don't blame me, I voted for McCain." But they don't, because honestly, no one really thinks America made the wrong decision in voting against John McCain. No one??? Think again, Sunshine!
(Similarly, no matter how unhappy people got with George W. Bush, no one ever said, "Things would be better if only John Kerry were president.")
What would be a good slogan to capture the disappointment people like McArdle--who either supported Obama or gave him the benefit of the doubt on the theory that he was calm and competent and would deal well with the current crises--are now feeling? Here's an idea: "America didn't vote for a rush to failure."
We can't take credit for that slogan; it actually comes from a political organization that is raising money to put it on billboards. "It's time to leave behind partisan attack politics and stand behind the policies that will strengthen and renew America's economy," explains the Web site.
Is President Obama listening? Almost certainly not. The slogan actually is not aimed at the president but at Rush Limbaugh, part of the Democratic National Committee's partisan attack on Limbaugh for being a harsh critic of Obama's policies. "Rush" in the slogan is a pun on Limbaugh's first name, though the Web site's rendition of the billboard has the slogan in all caps, so it's not clear if it is meant to be a proper or common noun.
How did the DNC end up choosing an anti-Limbaugh slogan that sounds like an anti-Obama (or at least disappointed-with-Obama) one? Crazily enough, according to an email we received from the DNC's Jen O'Malley Dillon, it was the winner of a contest. It was submitted by William C. of Camden, N.J., who apparently was forced to pawn his last name because he was so hard-hit by the Bush recession. Couldn't Jen O'Malley Dillon let him use one of hers?
But we digress. The whole Limbaugh kerfuffle makes both parties look silly. Democrats are attacking Limbaugh instead of actual Republican politicians not because the latter are so popular that it would backfire but because, for the moment at least, they're so marginal that they aren't worth attacking.
But when Democrats have big majorities of Congress and a president who came to office promising a whole new kind of politics, they too look pathetic for resorting to petty attack politics against someone who isn't even a politician. And they aren't even competent enough to come up with a slogan that makes clear which side they're on.
Posted by: Omoter Speaking for Boskone7794 ||
03/13/2009 11:17 ||
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All marching smartly, all working together, then the 'deer in the headlights' moment, when it finally sinks in. "What have I done."
#6
Fuck you, Taranto. I, for one, think that the majority made the wrong decision by voting against John McCain. I wouldn't have wasted three fucking months of my free time calling thousands of strangers to badger them into voting for the old so-and-so if I hadn't thought he was the better choice.
As foolish and AGW-addled as McCain can be, he's still a Republican, and favors roughly-Republican financial solutions. He would have kept the rush-to-stimulus under some sort of control, and had a better time filling the Treasury Department than Obama, if a worse time on every other department. Most importantly, he wouldn't have laid this deadening, suffocating weight of the Democratic potential which is what is really killing the general economy. Financial crises are financial crises, but depressions are born when you kill the entrepreneurial future, and that's what the prospect of an openly leftist administration is doing.
McCain's still the better choice, and it's a damned shame the US system doesn't offer the no-confidence do-over that is one of the saving graces of the parliamentary style of government.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
03/13/2009 16:33 Comments ||
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McCain's still the better choice, and it's a damned shame the US system doesn't offer the no-confidence do-over that is one of the saving graces of the parliamentary style of government.
I agree with the first clause, Mitch, but disagree with the second. The possibility of a do-over allows voters to engage more easily in posturing, as does that incredibly stupid minor party nonsense. If Israel had a simple first-past-the-post system like the U.S., future-PM Netanyahu wouldn't have spent the last month bargaining with idiots to put together a viable coalition to govern Israel.
#10
If Israel had a simple first-past-the-post system like the U.S.
Funny people Americans: all the time complain how their elected representatives don't give a damn what they want, all the time sing hosannas to their winner take all/POTUS king for 4 years system.
#13
PERSONALLY, I'm angry as he$$, and want to beat some heads in. With Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, Frank, Murtha, and a few dozen other assorted sleezeballs, the hard choice is what to do first.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
03/13/2009 22:52 Comments ||
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I'm sure we could defeat totally them one day but it seems more like the Taliban are VC in Cambodia. The only thing we can do is trim the grass when it grows long.
Whatever we do today, tomorrow some old man is recruiting young boys in Pakistan to resupply them and we can't go there to stop it.
Pakistan is less than 50% friend so it's not like we have a real ally but more like a fool who is in the way.
Some of us are willing to kill all of them, just to set an example. All of the NWFP tribal area needs to be sterilized, that would send a powerful message. The Magic Kingdom needs to be quarantined and the Royal Family jailed. I could go on, but there is no point.
Some aren't - Obama and Clinton and company who want to 'reach an accommodation' with the Taliban.
In all the 1400 year history of Islam and its war on civilization - accommodation hasn't worked yet. At most it gives you a small period of peace (granted only for a short time when Islam finds itself on the losing end. And even then only until Islam re-arms and re-groups.).
Yet every generation has its idiots who think that this time it'll be different. This time we can have 'peace in our time'.
THE West has become scared to criticise Islam and accepts death threats by Muslim extremists as normal, Cardinal George Pell has suggested in a speech in England. The outspoken Catholic Archbishop of Sydney said laws intended to promote tolerance were being used to stifle debate, which was "fermenting intolerance under the surface".
It's almost as if the good Cardinal reads Rantburg ...
In the March 6 speech at Oxford University, he also attacked a global campaign of "bullying and intimidation" by secular groups trying to drive Christians from public debate and stop churches providing schools, hospitals and welfare. "Many in the West have grown used to practising self-censorship when it comes to Islam, just as we seem to accept that ex-Muslims who criticise Islam and extremism, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, require round-the-clock police protection," he said.
"You can be persecuted for hate speech if you discuss violence in Islam, but there is little fear of a hate-speech prosecution for Muslim demonstrators with placards reading 'Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas'."
He said the expense and time of defending frivolous hate-speech allegations and the anxiety from "being enmeshed in a legal process straight out of Kafka" stifled robust discussion. "No one in the West today would suggest that criticism of Christianity should be outlawed," he said. "The secular and religious intolerance of our day needs to be confronted regularly and publicly."
Some secularists wanted a one-way street, and sought to drive Christianity not only from the public square but from providing education, health care and welfare to the wider community. "Modern liberalism has strong totalitarian tendencies," he said.
Cardinal Pell said a Californian referendum that rejected same-sex marriage had been a focus for demonstrations, violence, vandalism and intimidation of Christians. He said "this prolonged campaign of payback and bullying" would have received much more attention if same-sex marriage supporters had been the victims.
It was strange how some of the most permissive groups easily became repressive despite their rhetoric about diversity and tolerance, he said. "Opposition to same-sex marriage is a form of homophobia and therefore bad, but Christianophobic blacklisting and intimidation is passed over in silence," he said.
Cardinal Pell said discrimination laws had been used to redefine marriage and the family. Children could now have three, four or five parents, relegating the idea of a child being brought up by his natural mother and father to nothing more than a majority preference.
He said last year's Victorian law decriminalising abortion made a mockery of conscientious objection, which had been attacked as merely a way for doctors and nurses to impose their morality on their patients.
Cardinal Pell said Christians urgently needed to deepen public understanding about religious freedom.
#2
I had this excellent poly-sci and religious prof back in the early 90s who was way ahead of the curve on declaring that christianphobia would be the next target by PC culture after white males in general. The guy was a real conservative, it was surprising and a relief to have been in his class.
Pakistan recently gave in to the pressure of Islamist militants. Indeed to buy off peace, Pakistani authorities allowed the imposition of Shari'a (Islamic law) in the Swat Valley.
How long the cease-fire will last is anyone's guess. But in any case, Pakistan has allowed a precedent that could extend to other provinces; in fact the Swat Valley is only about 160 kilometers from Islamabad, the capital. But Shari'a is not making inroads only in Pakistan - it is creeping into the West.
One area particularly touched by this phenomenon is the judicial system in Europe. Two recent cases in Italy and France are particularly troublesome.
In Italy, three members of a Brescia-based Maghrebi family (father, mother and eldest son) were accused of beating and sequestering their daughter/sister Fatima because she had wanted to live a "Western" life.
In the first trial, the three were sentenced for sequestration and abuse. The court acknowledged that the teenager had been "brutally beaten up" for having "dated" a non-Muslim and, in general, for "living a life not conforming with the culture" of her family. But on appeal, the family was acquitted because the court deemed that the young woman had been beaten for "her own good."
The Bologna public prosecutor's office then disputed the acquittal of the three accused parties, but the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation dismissed it and ruled in favor of the charged parties.
Interestingly, two Italian political leaders on opposite sides of the political spectrum - Isabella Bertolini, vice president of the MPs of the right-wing party Forza Italia, and Barbara Pollastrini, a post-communist former minister - condemned the Supreme Court decision, calling it "one of the darkest pages in the history of the law in our country." Bertolini was upset that the court had "allied itself with radical Islam." Pollastrini is now pushing for parliament to pass a law condemning violence against women. "Now more than ever, it is urgent to defend the rights of a large number of immigrant women victims of an intolerable patriarchal culture," she says.
Muslim women were quick to denounce the Supreme Court's decision. Among them was Souad Sbai, president of the Organization of Moroccan Women in Italy. She said, "It is a shame, this verdict is worthy of an Arab country where the Shari'a is vigorously enforced. In the name of multiculturalism and respect for traditions, the judges apply two kinds of rules: one for the Italians and one for the immigrants. A Catholic father who had acted this way would have been severely sentenced."
According to her organization, at least nine Muslim women have recently been killed in Italy by close relatives. The number of young girls forced to wear the hijab "as early as eight or 12" is on the rise, as is the number of female teenagers fleeing home, and "lots of them are looking to flee to France." But France might not be the panacea either. Indeed, in one widely publicized case last June, a French judge ruled in favor of a Muslim man who wanted the annulment of his marriage because his wife had turned out not to be a virgin. What this decision amounted to was an endorsement of the repudiation concept.
This decision triggered a huge outcry from politicians and various organizations. In November, a French appeals court overturned the decision. Interestingly, a large majority of French Muslims, about 80 percent, are very secular and totally reject any kind of Shari'a law being implemented in France the "homeland" of human rights.
But the United Kingdom is a different story; indeed, close to 40% of young Muslims there are in favor of Shari'a law being implemented. The idea also seems to be making headway among non-Muslims. Last year, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said the legal recognition of Muslim religious courts "seems unavoidable." He added that the UK had to "face up to the fact" that some of its citizens did not relate to the British legal system.
Williams argued that adopting parts of Shari'a law would help maintain social cohesion. For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Shari'a court.
But contrary to what Williams advanced, Sadiq Khan, a British Muslim MP, said Shari'a courts would discourage Muslims from developing links with other cultural and ethnic groups. He feared also that women would be "abused" by such courts, which may give unequal bargaining power to the sexes.
In Switzerland, Christian Giordano, an anthropology professor at Fribourg University, echoed Williams by writing that a special jurisdiction for Muslims could be envisioned there. He added that including elements of Islamic law could allow the multiculturalism issue to be better managed.
Other occurrences of Shari'a law taking precedence over the law of the country have been reported. For example, in Denmark, some imams have allegedly sentenced delinquent Muslims, hence bypassing the country's judicial system.
So Islamists, much to the detriment of the majority of Muslims in Europe, seem to be making headway in pushing Shari'a law into the continent's judicial systems.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/13/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Interestingly, a large majority of French Muslims, about 80 percent, are very secular and totally reject any kind of Shari'a law being implemented in France
#3
Adding apostrophes to arab words like sharia and koran is a good sign of the inroads being made by islam. Do the editors at the JPost not see the hypocracy here?
Back when Michigan's economy was merely troubled -- before $4-a-gallon gas and frozen credit markets pushed the auto industry into free-fall -- Gov. Jennifer Granholm warned the Big Mitten's deepening economic problems could presage what lay ahead for the nation.
I and other skeptics chortled, figuring the collective denial of economic reality, anti-business rhetoric in Lansing, rote acceptance of labor's influence in policy-making, and higher tax loads on individuals and companies here couldn't possibly go national. The combination was too toxic, too self-defeating, too steeped in a last-century worldview that had been discredited by events and chronic failure.
But I was wrong.
Less than two months into a new administration in Washington, much of the tone and substance coming from the Obama White House and its allies in a Democratic-controlled Congress sound eerily familiar to weary Michigan ears. At least they should.
There's money for education, health care and alternative technology. There's the prospect of higher tax loads for some individuals and higher energy prices for all. There's a push to increase the influence of the labor lobby by making organizing easier. There are rhetorical shots at business, some undeserved. There's even a Harvard Law-educated CEO who gives a great speech.
Been there, done that.
Come to Michigan, America, to see where some of this could lead if a) it's not accompanied by plain recognition that business is the most effective creator of jobs and b) the boss slow-walks remedies to serious problems, as Obama is doing on the banking crisis.
Here, we have the nation's highest unemployment rate, a dubious distinction that shows no sign of abating.
We have an economic icon whose leaders need federal assistance because their industry is on the verge of collapse. Boosters of Detroit would contend this increasingly likely outcome has been building for just the past few months, but the truth is that it's been coming for years, a legacy of management mistakes, labor over-reach and political inertia.
We have the poorest major city in America. Detroit's schools are an embarrassing failure and under state supervision. Detroit's finances are a mess, and its City Council has become a caricature of itself -- when clips of its latest shenanigans aren't drawing hits on YouTube, that is.
We have a civic culture, born of an affluent past, that tends to glorify the good ol' days when it isn't wallowing in victimhood or engaging in the kind of childish us vs. them spats that impede progress and cloud recognition that common problems demand common solutions.
We have a state capital whose strongest leaders aren't the governor, the speaker of the House or the Senate majority leader. They're the heads of the United Auto Workers and the Michigan Education Association, the two biggest obstacles to the structural reform of state and local government despite steadily declining tax revenues, population and per capita incomes.
We have a record of hectoring the private sector. For evidence, see Granholm's statement on the October 2005 bankruptcy of Delphi Corp. or the first attempt at state business tax reform. See, too, decisions by Comerica Inc., Volkswagen of America and Pfizer Corp. to bolt Michigan because its business climate was deemed to be a liability.
Most of all, we have a penchant for addressing the symptoms of problems because attacking the root causes is too hard. It doesn't work.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/13/2009 00:00 ||
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Lived there for 4 years in the mid 90s when things were going fine. Not coincidently they had a pro business Republican governor named Engler. Unemployment even dipped below the national average for a while. Unfortunately this was a brief era of sanity on the path to committing economic suicide. Scary to see these policies brought nationwide.
#2
...The real problem with Michigan is IIRC, 2/3rds of its population is in that little corner called Detroit. The rest of the state dances to whatever tune the idiots there call, and they haven't liked it for many, many years now.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
03/13/2009 5:35 Comments ||
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Mike, the real problems with Michigan are the UAW and the educational "establishment"
For years, the Hudson Institutes Center for Religious Freedom, the Institute for Gulf Affairs, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and various Washington Post journalists have been documenting the fact that the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) in northern Virginia a school founded, funded, and controlled by the Saudi embassy was teaching religious hatred and violence. More precisely, the Saudi Academy used Saudi Ministry of Education textbooks that sanction what is known in the United States as murder against Jews, adulterers, homosexuals, and converts from Islam, and that encourage Muslims to break various other American laws. The Saudi Academy is now putting out the word that its textbooks have been revised. Should we declare victory and move on? Not so fast.
The Associated Press, which ran a story this week headlined Saudi Academy in Virginia Revises Islamic History Books, relies on quotes from three individuals who give the academys new textbooks a Good Housekeeping seal of approval: Academy director Abdulrahman Alghofaili, Brown University visiting fellow Eleanor Doumato, and University of North Carolina anthropology professor Gregory Starrett. As AP makes clear, all three were paid by the Islamic Saudi Academy to review the textbooks. A fourth commentator quoted in the AP report, Ali Ahmed, who is the president of the Gulf Institute and who is not funded by the Saudis, gives a somewhat different assessment. As the AP reporter paraphrases, The revised texts now being used at ISA make some small improvements in tone. But he said its clear from the books that the core ideology behind them a puritanical strain of Islam known as Wahhabism that is dominant within Saudi Arabia remains intact.
Ever since September 11, 2001, there has been a highly funded publicity campaign by the Saudi embassy to persuade Americans that the Academys textbooks have been completely revised. Saudi ads in American political magazines, speeches by various Saudi ambassadors and foreign ministers before the Council on Foreign Relations, a national speaking tour by the Saudi ambassador all have spoken along the lines one of those ambassadors, Turki al-Faisal, took when he told a Town Hall meeting in Los Angeles in 2006: The Kingdom has reviewed all of its education practices and materials, and has removed any element that is inconsistent with the needs of a modern education. Not only have we eliminated what might be perceived as intolerance from old textbooks that were in our system, we have implemented a comprehensive internal revision and modernization plan. A number of prominent Americans Charles Freeman, for example have repeated such claims, despite our annual reports that show this is far from true. At this point, forget trust; we must verify.
The AP story reports that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, a large regional educational accrediting agency, was conducting a review of the Saudi Academy curriculum. Unfortunately the Association may not be up to the task. In 2005, it accredited the Academy, not knowing since it did not have the capacity to translate the texts from Arabic that the school countenanced religiously motivated killing. Although the accrediting association now says it has improved its procedures, it still relies on volunteers to do its inspections. The State Department, which had been requested to sponsor a textbook review by Rep. Frank Wolf (R., Va.), the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, which oversees its budget, refused to get involved. In the light of these institutional failures, the Hudson Institutes Center for Religious Freedom, Mr. Ahmed, and outside expert translators are currently working on a thorough, independent review of the Academys new textbooks, which will be released later this spring.
Readers may recall that the Saudi curriculum has been blamed including by a growing number of Saudi commentators for helping to form the ideology underlying such jihadi terrorists as Osama bin Laden, the 11 Saudi members of the 9/11 hijacking team, the Saudi Gitmo detainees (who formed the largest contingent there, after persons from Afghanistan), the Saudi suicide bombers in Iraq (who formed the largest such foreign contingent), the Pakistani Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba and its network of radical schools that trained the Mumbai terrorists, and even a former valedictorian of the Saudi Academy itself, to name but a few.
What the Islamic Saudi Academy teaches is important. This Saudi government entity in our midst is now educating some 1,000 students and has said that its mission is to be the premier educational institution for the American Muslim community. No less than our national security and way of life are at stake.
It takes some gall to grumble about getting billions in U.S. taxpayer handouts. Does U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expect spend-happy Uncle Sam to give the corrupt U.N. its own stimulus?
It wasn't the way to win friends and influence people in the U.S. Congress -- even this spendthrift band of power-drunk lawmakers.
In a private meeting with members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the secretary-general called America a "deadbeat" nation because U.S. taxpayers have been slow in chucking out another billion dollars in dues.
The U.S. ponies up some 22% of the nearly $5 billion U.N. budget. We also host that body's gaggle of diplomats in the cosmopolitan capital of the world, New York City, where they can dine, philander and double-park (via VIP license plates) in high style.
Yet after giving them all that, and after hearing their never-ending attacks against the U.S., our economic freedoms and our near-unilateral military efforts to fight terrorism in the world, we also get subjected to insults and name-calling for being late with the money.
As described by the Associated Press, when Ban was asked if he had actually used the word "deadbeat," the U.N. chief answered, " 'Yes, I did -- I did,' then laughed mischievously."
With liberal Democrats in power in both the White House and Congress, Ban can afford to laugh; he and the U.N.'s Third World majority are confident that in the coming years no John Bolton or Jeane Kirkpatrick will be holding them to much account.
No one will invite the U.N. to relocate, as Kirkpatrick deputy Charles Lichtenstein famously did a quarter-century ago, with the assurance that the U.S. mission "will be down at the dockside waving you a fond farewell as you sail off into the sunset."
The more one examines the U.N.'s record of corruption and criminality, the more attractive Sen. John McCain's idea of a "League of Democracies" looks.
How can an international body be taken seriously when the committee it convenes to organize a "racism summit," next month's Durban Review Conference in Geneva, is chaired by one of the worst human rights violators and supporters of terrorism in the world, Moammar Gadhafi's Libya? Among that same committee's other members are Iran, Cuba and Russia.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/13/2009 00:00 ||
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How nice , not only the 22%(low figure) we supply in funds and personnel , but Ban Ki-moon has been under the protection of the US for most of his life.
Without the "deadbeats" he'd be eating grass soup and praying to Dear Leader.
Posted by: Bill Uneang8288 ||
03/13/2009 3:50 Comments ||
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see grouchyoldcripple blog for definitive response
You don't have to be a supporter of Britain's involvement in Iraq to feel sickened by the ugliness of what happened at the homecoming parade of the Royal Anglians in Luton.
The war wasn't of their making. They didn't ask to be sent to Basra. They simply did their duty and risked their lives in the service of their country. Twelve of their comrades paid the ultimate price. But these troops came home to find themselves openly insulted and abused by Islamist fanatics - people who have made this country their home and accepted its generous hospitality.
What is more, these are the same people on whom this government has spent a staggering £90million, supposedly trying to divert young Muslims from violent extremism.
I write as someone who would once have lined up alongside those protesters. For three years, I was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical Islamic organisation committed to creating a puritanical Muslim state.
That is why I can now see how completely wrong the approach of the fanatics - and the Government - is.
Indeed, in a recent report written for the think tank Policy Exchange, entitled Choosing Our Friends Wisely, I, with fellow author Martyn Frampton, warned that a generation of young Muslims is being radicalised by the very policy that is supposed to combat violence.
The disgusting scenes in Luton provide the perfect illustration. They speak volumes about the way public money is being squandered, the hopeless inadequacy of official policy, and the damage the Government's obsession with multi-culturalism is wreaking on society.
Yes, the band played on Tuesday. Crowds cheered as the Royal Anglians marched past. The overwhelming mood in Luton was expressed by one home-made notice. 'Thank you' it said.
But it was the protest that captured the headlines: the snarls of hate from 'political Islamists', the placards branding the soldiers war criminals, the vile accusations that they are murderers and baby killers.
As the meticulously printed slogans show, this was no spontaneous eruption of anger. It was carefully planned to have the maximum impact.
And let nobody take comfort from the fact that this was a tiny demonstration, involving just 15 young men. These were British Muslims, born and brought up in a country that prides itself on its tolerance. Yet their contempt for British values is terrifying in its implications. It doesn't take many people to cause mayhem. Haven't we learned anything from the London bombings?
They despise democracy and free speech, yet exploit both to promote their pernicious agenda. These same people claim to be oppressed by the British state, yet they relied on the police to protect them from the - understandably - outraged public.
Hypocrisy, indeed. Yet just examine the way such perverse attitudes are actively encouraged by the way Whitehall tries to deal with political Islamism.
There is an obsessive belief among some Ministers and police chiefs that the way forward is to concentrate on a 'dialogue' with extremists (who hate Jews, despise women and think homosexuals should be killed).
Unable to assess the groups they are funding properly and believing only radicals possess the necessary 'street-cred' to control angry young Muslims, local authorities and the police actively back extremists at the expense of moderate leaders.
So it was that a council such as Tower Hamlets, for example, could award a grant to the Cordoba Foundation, an Islamist pressure group that offered a platform to Hizb ut-Tahrir, who also promote the false view that Islam forbids democracy. Such grants are almost routine. No doubt the officials who support such folly believe their approach will give them an insight into the fanatical mindset and help prevent the next act of terrorism - and in the short term, they may have a point.
But what do they think it does to moderate Muslim opinion? If people such as Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and Community Secretary Hazel Blears seem to favour ranting troublemakers such as Abu Hamza at the expense of the quiet, moderate majority, doesn't it send a signal that such fanatics have a message worth hearing?
But Whitehall seems blind to the dangers. How many more millions will be spent before it dawns on us that we are contributing to our own ruin?
For years, governments have tolerated preachers of hate. We are still paying the price for that, as phoney 'sheikhs' in beards and flowing robes peddle their poisonous message.
So, we throw money at the wrong people. We dismay moderate Muslims by puffing up the extremists who hate us. And we welcome troublemakers who have been forced to flee their own countries and ignore their activities-once they are here. Is it surprising that some young Muslims are tempted by the spurious glamour of extremism?
But there is one other factor that contributes to our unhappy plight: we don't seem to have the confidence to promote Britishness and the values that underpin our democratic way of life.
One of the things that struck me most forcefully is the pitiful reluctance of officialdom to promote a sense of British identity. Looking through key Government documents, I could hardly find the word. Yes, there were plenty of jargon phrases such as ' performance indicators'. But Britishness, and the tolerance, decency, fairness and democracy that underpins our way of life? Forget it. It is almost as though our leaders are ashamed of our own country and culture.
Yet it doesn't have to be like this. After all, Muslims in their hundreds of thousands were proud to fight for Britain in two World Wars. My grandfather volunteered to fight against Hitler because he believed there were core moral values - and core British values, too - that had to be defended against Nazism.
My own journey away from extremism took place when I began to understand that Islam is far more plural and humane than anything dreamed of by the Luton demonstrators. So instead of indulging the noisy, self-styled 'leaders' of the Muslim community, shouldn't official policy concentrate on genuinely encouraging moderation?
A Parliamentary inquiry into how much of the Government's £90million has already been squandered would be a start. How much of it has been handed to people who hate us? And how much has gone on projects that make our situation worse?
We might follow that up by giving more say to those MPs who have large numbers of Muslim constituents.
Above all, we might stop sucking up to extremists and start standing up for British values, British traditions and the British way of life. We have so many things to be proud of in this country. Why don't we celebrate them?
It may be too late to convert the sorry, deluded protesters of Luton. But could there be any better way of discouraging others from embracing their pitiful ideology than by having the courage and confidence to be true to ourselves?
Shiraz Maher is a former Islamic extremist
Posted by: ed ||
03/13/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Pretty impressive, eloquent, and practical essay. Still pretty pessimistic about the UK's future as a useful ally, though.
#3
The author doesn't understand that the problem is not the British, it is the English. The Scots are still being Scots, the Welsh, Welsh and the Irish, Irish. But the English have quit. They were decimated by WWI and their empire liquidated by the mid-century. The destruction of their constitution by a Scot completed the century.
We should not gloat. The decline of the WASP in America is pretty much 50 years behind the decline of the English in Britain. It is happening a bit more slowly here because American WASPishness was not so much heritable as a belief system anyone could adopt. And so it grew beyond its ethnic enclave evene as the English Americans quit, to endure in new generations of work ethic driven immigrants.
But now 0 will put the end to it with his New New Deal of Euro socialism and supine posturing with foreign tyrants. And now we know first hand how and why ancient Greek and Roman republics fell.
#1
Most ICBM fields are in the interior, far from national borders, to protect them from air attack. In order for these "stealthy drones" to get close enough they would have to orbit relatively close to the launch sites. Flying armed aircraft in another nation's airspace is an act of war. This another idea from someone who either is woefully naive or who hasn't thought it through.
#2
The article is full of FAIL. Chemical based lasers are old tech, now replaced with much smaller and cooler solid state lasers. The tech is so promising that though the Dems in congress voted to take away funding, its developers are funding it themselves, which aggravates the hell out of the Dems, who want NO missile defenses at all, because they are "provocative".
As far as launch phase anti-missile drones, it is a lower tech solution to launch phase neutralization. Such a drone could carry a few small, light, very fast air to air missiles that would almost guarantee a shoot down. This is because almost any external damage to an ICBM is fatal damage--they tear themselves apart.
#4
Would work if these drones were rocket powered, nuclear tipped and hit their targets before the ICBMs were launched. Otherwise epic FAIL. And epic STUPIDITY if this is what passes for the Democratic party's defense thinking.
Posted by: ed ||
03/13/2009 15:22 Comments ||
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Six months after the collapse, a "pandemic of fear."
By PEGGY NOONAN
It is six months since Lehman fell and the crash (or the great recession, or the collapse--it's time it got its name) began. An aspect of the story given less attention than it is due, perhaps because it doesn't lend itself to statistics, is the psychic woe beneath the economic blow. There are two parts to this. One is that we have arrived at the first fatigue. The heart-pumping drama of last September is gone, replaced by the drip-drip-drip of pink slips, foreclosures and closed stores. We are tired. It doesn't feel like 1929, but 1930. People are in a kind of suspended alarm, waiting for the future to unspool and not expecting it to unspool happily.
Two, the economy isn't the only reason for our unease. There's more to it. People sense something slipping away, a world receding, not only an economic one but a world of old structures, old ways and assumptions. People don't talk about this much because it's too big, but I suspect more than a few see themselves, deep down, as "the designated mourner," from the title of the Wallace Shawn play.
I asked a friend, a perceptive writer, if he is seeing what I'm seeing. Yes, he said, there is "a pervasive sense of anxiety, as though everyone feels they're on thin ice." He wonders if it's "maybe a sense that we've had it too easy in the years since 9/11 and that the bad guys are about to appear on the horizon." An attorney in a Park Avenue firm said, "Things look like they have changed and may not come back." He contrasted the feeling now on the streets with 2001. "Things are subdued. . . . Nine-eleven was brutal and graphic. Yet because there was real death and loss of life folks could grieve and then move on." But today, "the dread is chronic. . . . Tom Wolfe's Masters of the Universe were supposed to be invincible. The pillars of media were supposed to be there forever. The lawyers were supposed to feed through thick and thin. Not anymore." He quoted Ecclesiastes: "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth." We are worried, he said, "about a way of life, about the loss of upward trajectory."
The sale of antidepressants and antianxiety drugs is widespread. In New York their use became common after 9/11. It continued through and, I hypothesize, may have contributed to, the high-flying, wildly imprudent Wall Street of the '00s. We look for reasons for the crash and there are many, but I wonder if Xanax, Zoloft and Klonopin, when taken by investment bankers, lessened what might have been normal, prudent anxiety, or helped confuse prudent anxiety with baseless, free-floating fear. Maybe Wall Street was high as a kite and didn't notice. Maybe that would explain Bear Sterns, and Merrill, and Citi.
Gun sales continue up. The FBI's criminal background check system showed a 23% increase in February over the previous year, a 29% increase in January, a 24% increase in December and a 42% increase in November, when a record 1.5 million background checks were performed. Yes, people fear Obama will take away the guns he thinks they cling to, but a likely equal contributor to what The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch called a "gun-buying binge" is captured in the slogan on one firearms maker's Web site: "Smith & Wesson stands for protection." People are scared.
They are taking cash out of the bank in preparation for a long-haul bad time. A friend in Florida told me the local bank was out of hundred-dollar bills on Wednesday because a man had come in the day before and withdrawn $90,000. Five weeks ago, when I asked a Wall Street titan what one should do to be safe in the future, he took me aback with the concreteness of his advice, and its bottom-line nature. Everyone should try to own a house, he said, no matter how big or small, but it has to have some land, on which you should learn how to grow things. He also recommended gold coins, such as American Eagles. I went to the U.S. Mint website the next day, but there was a six-week wait due to high demand. (I just went on the Web site again: Production of gold Eagle coins "has been temporarily suspended because of unprecedented demand" for bullion.)
In Manhattan, Catholic church attendance appears to be up. Everyone seems to agree that this is so, though the archdiocese says it won't have numbers until next fall. But yes, said Joseph Zwilling, the director of communications, "from what I've heard anecdotally from various priests," the pews have been fuller. The rector at St Patrick's told him Ash Wednesday was "the busiest yet," with 60,000 people coming for ashes. At my local church at noon mass one day this week, there were 40 people when normally there are roughly a dozen, and the communion line stretched to the back of the church. Something is happening. Yesterday a friend sent the warning of the Evangelical pastor David Wilkerson, of Times Square Church, that a new catastrophe is imminent. This is causing a small sensation in evangelical circles.
To me, one of the signal signs of the times is the number of people surfing the Internet looking for . . . something. One friend looks for small farms in distressed rural areas. Another logs on late at night looking for a house to buy in a small town out West, or down South, or in the Deep South. She is moving all around America in her imagination. I asked if she had a picture in her head of what she was looking for, and she joked that she wanted to go where Atticus Finch made his summation to the jury. I don't think it was really a joke. She's not looking for a new place, she's looking for the old days.
I spoke to a Manhattan-based psychiatrist who said there is an uptick in the number of his patients reporting depression and anxiety. He believes part of the reason is that we're in a new place, that "When people move into a new home they increasingly recognize the importance of their previous environment." Our new home is postprosperity America; the old one was the abundance; we miss it. But he also detected a political dimension to his patients' anguish. He felt that many see our leaders as "selfish and dishonest," that "our institutions have been revealed as incompetent and undependable." People feel "unled, overwhelmed," the situation "seemingly unsalvageable." The net result? He thinks what he is seeing, within and without his practice, is a "psychological pandemic of fear" as to the future of things--of our country, and even of mankind.
So where does that leave us? The writer and philosopher Laurens van der Post, in his memoir of his friendship with Carl Jung, said, "We live not only our own lives but, whether we know it or not, also the life of our time." We are actors in a moment of history, taking part in it, moving it this way or that as we move forward or back. The moment we are living now is a strange one, a disquieting one, a time that seems full of endings.
Too bad there's no pill for that. I know Peggy Noonan is just making observations based on what she perceives from conversations but isn't it all too obvious? To use a business parallel one is either a "price taker" or a "price maker". Given the realization that those in whom trust was invested, nay to those to whom responsibility was abdicated, have been shown to have feet of clay, is not the future a choice between characterless oblivion or self-help? Have the senses been dulled to the point where grudging weak kneed acceptance is the only course? Or is there a spark of individuality in sufficient people to ignite a fire of reaction, of revolt, of non-acceptance? History is just repeating itself. It just confirms that those who think for themselves and don't buy into the general malaise will find a way out first and move on. Truth is plenty of people already have their futures in hand and continue on, optimistic and rejecting the self defeat which accompanies the unthinking acceptance of the One who offers all the answers. They know the emperor has no clothes. The train has already left the station.
Posted by: Omoter Speaking for Boskone7794 ||
03/13/2009 11:46 ||
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We are actors in a moment of history, taking part in it, moving it this way or that as we move forward or back. The moment we are living now is a strange one, a disquieting one, a time that seems full of endings.
Will someone please allow Ms. Noonan to slip gracefully into retirement? Writing information-null but beautifully crafted sentences is an extravagance in these times when so many organizations are stripping themselves to the bone in order to survive.
#3
Ms. Noonan demonstrates herself, again, to be one of those "conservative" elitists totally out of touch with the more mundane folk who are this country. She, along with Brooks and Buckley, are Upper West Side conservatives that prefer their liberal elite neighbors to real working folk like those represented by JoeTP and Sarah Palin. That's why they were so thrilled to buy into the illusion of The One. Reality still seems to be an illusion for them. Something they read about as happening somewhere else.
Note the type of people she references and it becomes obvious.
WASHINGTON -- Last week, the White House invited me to a signing ceremony overturning the Bush (43) executive order on stem cell research. I assume this was because I have long argued in these columns and during my five years on the President's Council on Bioethics that, contrary to the Bush policy, federal funding should be extended to research on embryonic stem cell lines derived from discarded embryos in fertility clinics.
I declined to attend. Once you show your face at these things you become a tacit endorser of whatever they spring. My caution was vindicated.
Bush had restricted federal funding for embryonic stem cell research to cells derived from embryos that had already been destroyed (as of his speech of Aug. 9, 2001). While I favor moving that moral line to additionally permit the use of spare fertility clinic embryos, Obama replaced it with no line at all. He pointedly left open the creation of cloned -- and noncloned sperm-and-egg-derived -- human embryos solely for the purpose of dismemberment and use for parts.
I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science, and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn. I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research -- a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.
On this, Obama has nothing to say. He leaves it entirely to the scientists. This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of "science" and its inherent moral benevolence. How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom.
That part of the ceremony, watched from the safe distance of my office, made me uneasy. The other part -- the ostentatious issuance of a memorandum on "restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making" -- would have made me walk out.
Restoring? The implication, of course, is that while Obama is guided solely by science, Bush was driven by dogma, ideology and politics.
What an outrage. George Bush's nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.
Obama's address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the "false choice between sound science and moral values." Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the "use of cloning for human reproduction."
Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.
Is he so obtuse not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike President Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not.
This is not just intellectual laziness. It is the moral arrogance of a man who continuously dismisses his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics.
Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible. Obama's pretense that he will "restore science to its rightful place" and make science, not ideology, dispositive in moral debates is yet more rhetorical sleight of hand -- this time to abdicate decision-making and color his own ideological preferences as authentically "scientific."
Dr. James Thomson, the discoverer of embryonic stem cells, said "if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough." Obama clearly has not.
Posted by: Omoter Speaking for Boskone7794 ||
03/13/2009 02:04 ||
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For all his superb education, Obama clearly has never read Brave New World.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/13/2009 11:46 Comments ||
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#3
Good to see this from CK. "Outrage" is right. As is the whole preposterous, arrogant shtick about "restoring" science - even as a discredited wacko is made science advisor and the "administration" (I believe those quote marks are now reasonable) embraces the absurd "climate change" mythology as a basis for (further) wrecking modern economies.
I don't follow this stuff much, but I couldn't help but notice how thorough, serious, and thoughtful Bush's stem-cell thinggy was. Actually, like many other things he did. Yet the MSM and the opposition and the brain-dead populace just wratcheted up their bizarre anti-Bush hysteria by the month. He had enough idiotic policies to make my blood boil and confound me - rule of law, er, illegal immigration, federal spending, deepening rather than fixing the educational morass, and finally the economic panic last fall - but the extreme and near-hallucinogenic hatred and hysteria towards him has changed my feeling about my fellow citizens forever.
Lysenkoism has a death-grip on the corrupt "scientists" and the illiterate power-mad statists. This "restore" crap is a platonically perfect Orwellianism. Sickening.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Confronting misgivings, even in his own party, President Barack Obama mounted a stout defense of his blueprint to overhaul the economy Thursday, declaring the national crisis is "not as bad as we think" and his plans will speed recovery. This is an hilarious defence of Obamomics by the author who has acknowledged that he doesn't understand the share market and proved it again last week with his defence of good "profit ratios" for stocks.
Challenged to provide encouragement as the nation's "confidence builder in chief," Obama said Americans shouldn't be whipsawed by bursts of either bad or good news and he was "highly optimistic" [Please note the fine print qualification noted below]
about the long term.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Omoter Speaking for Boskone7794 ||
03/13/2009 00:16 ||
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Remember the chant of Kerry-Pelosi in '06 about the "worst economy ever"? Compare to this -
The U.S. unemployment rate reached 8.1 percent in February, the highest level in more than a quarter century, Labor said on March 6. Employers eliminated 651,000 positions, the third straight month that losses surpassed 600,000 and the first time that has happened since records began in 1939.
Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News earlier this month predicted the U.S. jobless rate will reach 9.4 percent this year and stay elevated through at least 2011. At the same time, the countryâs economy will shrink 2.5 percent in 2009, the biggest contraction since 1946.
"not as bad as we think". You believe the MSM will hound the One as much as they hounded W for "mission accomplished"? /rhetorical question
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
dominated Mexico for six years.
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.
Obama's "rush to failure" leaves his backers with buyer's remorse.
For years, the Hudson Institutes Center for Religious Freedom, the Institute for Gulf Affairs, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and various Washington Post journalists have been documenting the fact that the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) in northern Virginia a school founded, funded, and controlled by the Saudi embassy was teaching religious hatred and violence. More precisely, the Saudi Academy used Saudi Ministry of Education textbooks that sanction what is known in the United States as murder against Jews, adulterers, homosexuals, and converts from Islam, and that encourage Muslims to break various other American laws. The Saudi Academy is now putting out the word that its textbooks have been revised. Should we declare victory and move on? Not so fast.
