I'm going on a long trip for the next couple of days, and the problem with traveling is that it interferes with blogging. Might check in if I have time, but meanwhile there are several things worth reading.

This week's RINO Sightings Carnival is hosted by longtime favorite jd at evolution, and the theme is how the tyranny of identity politics destroys freedom. And even life:

The foriegn minister of Pakistan, noted bastion of religious tolerance and freedom, says of the Pope: “Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence.” Got it? The Pope made bands of Islamist militants murder a nun in Somalia.

most Westerners these days will twist themselves into impossible pretzel shapes to avoid “giving offense”, and in some places the “freedom from offense” (which I do not believe exists) has been codified.

As Mark Coffey observes, a nuclear attack is more likely than ever. (But I guess we deserve it, for we have supported Israel, and tried to interfere with Iran's right to nuclear self determination.)

Did you realize that you might be considered offensive and in need of political correction by a review board for dating members of the wrong race? I didn't either, but Digger has a great post on the subject of white men who get involved with Asian women. Unbelievable.

jd did a great job with his analysis, and all the posts are worth reading.

For more insight into the psychological mechanics of the metastasizing war against the West, Paula R. Stern has an excellent op ed titled "Where Synagogues Burn":

The lesson of history, learned over the centuries, is that where synagogues burn, so too will churches. Just a year ago, the abandoned synagogues of Gaza were desecrated and burned. There was little condemnation, except by those of us who knew that a society that burns a synagogue, will also kidnap, murder and terrorize.

There was little was mourning for the beautiful houses of worship that were attacked by rampaging mobs, except by those of us who knew that what was born in Gaza that day was a people who believed they had won. They saw our withdrawal as the beginning of their victory; our weakness as their strength. What they did to the synagogues of Gaza, they would do to churches given "cause."

What came out of Gaza, out of Iraq, out of Afghanistan, is a movement to bring Islam to rule the earth. So intolerant is this religion, that a picture is enough to incite murder; an errant word enough to justify rioting and the burning of holy sites. The Christian world and the Jewish world shy away from these truths because they are as abhorrent to the world we wish to believe exists as ethnic profiling. We don't like the idea that it is possible to determine the threat someone poses based on his or her ethnic appearance. It is racist. It is wrong.

the bottom line is simply that we in the western world don't act that way. We don't riot when insulted; we don't burn when inflamed.

We apologize, because among civilized people, an apology is seen as the civilized thing to do when someone is offended. The problem is, uncivilized people see apologies as weakness. No number of apologies is ever enough. Which means one is too many.

jd is right to call these "dark days."

LINGERING QUESTION: Is it civilized to be unable to recognize the fact that some people are uncivilized? Seriously, it strikes me that merely posing such a question is no longer acceptable in "civilized society." As I see it, either that makes me uncivilized, or civilization can be carried too far. (An inability to recognize the existence of barbarity strikes me as going too far.)