Roundup of "undead" stories?

While I am very skeptical of conspiracy theories, the fact is that occasionally, there are unexplained conspiracies. By definition, unexplained conspiracies (until they are explained) logically demand the utilization of (for lack of a better phrase) conspiracy theories as a tool of examination. There is no question that terrorism -- whether domestic or international -- always involves a conspiracy. In attempting to analyze unsettled and vexing stories, I try to avoid the following common pitfalls:

  • the temptation of believing what I want to believe
  • the temptation of disbelieving (denying) what I don't want to believe
  • the temptation of clinging too tenaciously to my own conclusions (if any)
  • the temptation of being adversely influenced by emotions instead of logic (loud and ugly tones, or harsh rhetoric make me distrustful; reasonable tones engender trust and can create illusions of truth)
  • With that in mind, I want to briefly examine (and provide a roundup of stories on) topic which Glenn Reynolds called the "potential for cooperation between Arab terrorists and domestic extremists."

    It touches on a very troubling story which has not gone away, and won't go away until it is thoroughly investigated: possible connections between Iraq and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. There are numerous conspiracy theories floating around, and some of them are simply nuts. But what I have noticed is that there are too many reports from ordinary, non-conspiracy-minded citizens. Too many to be ignored (even though the conventional wisdom seems to be to ignore them).

    Like this one in the Ether Zone (which I seriously suggest reading in its entirety):

    We, as American citizens, had a right to know that the Iraqi regime was directly implicated in a second terrorist act upon American soil, the first occurring two years prior at the Twin Towers, NYC (1993). With that pivotal knowledge, the American people could have geared up for the "war on terrorism" much sooner, and possibly even averted the 9/11 disaster. Clearly, the Justice Department, under the direct auspices of Bill Clinton and his lackeys Janet Reno and Eric Holder, chose to represent the Oklahoma City bombing as a solely domestic conspiracy, eschewing all indications of Iraqi involvement. It’s bad enough that Clinton patently ignored overseas terrorist assaults on American assets in the 1990’s (Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, our Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, etc.). But to deep-six evidence of an Iraqi connection to the Oklahoma City bombing is no less than mind-boggling, totally egregious. Moreover, if the entire plot had been exposed, the American public would have pressured Bill Clinton to take appropriate military action against Iraq, whether he liked it or not. And I’m not talking about hitting another camel in the rear with an expensive cruise missile. There would have been calls for all-out war against Saddam Hussein’s regime. I really don’t think that was part of Bill Clinton’s agenda while in office. Remember, he had his eye on that Nobel Peace Prize for brokering an Israeli-Palestinian accord that never materialized.

    There seems to be compelling evidence of an "Iraqi link" developed by several individuals including McVeigh defense attorney Stephen Jones, Larry Klayman of the Judicial Watch organization, and Oklahoma City attorney Mike Johnson. Apparently, neither Timothy McVeigh nor his accomplice Terry Nichols knew how to make a powerful bomb capable of bringing down the Murrah building. Nichols, who had been married to a Filipino, traveled on many occasions to the Philippines, a nation known to harbor elements of Islamic fanaticism. Based on the testimony of a variety of witnesses, it’s believed that Nichols allied himself with a group of Islamic militants located in Cebu City in the Philippines, where he was instructed in the art of bomb-making by Ramzi Youssef, an Iraqi agent. Nichols, in turn, passed on this know-how to his buddy and crime partner, Timothy McVeigh. Moreover, Ramzi Youssef is the same individual who was subsequently convicted of participation in the 1993 Twin Towers bombing. In the referenced Insight magazine piece, Stephen Jones stated, "We went to the Philippines four times to investigate Terry Nichols’ meetings with Ramzi Youssef and other known terrorists". And Jones believes that there is a "prima facie" case for Iraqi involvement in the terrorist assault upon the Murrah Building. There are also reports that McVeigh had Iraqi telephone numbers on his person when he was arrested.

    Extensive information is presented in the federal lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch against the nation of Iraq on behalf of those victimized by the Oklahoma City attack (Judicial Watch website). According to the legal complaint, "Plaintiffs assert that the entire plot was, in whole or part, orchestrated, assisted technically and/or financially, and directly aided by agents of the Republic of Iraq". Noteworthy, the attacks upon both the Murrah Building and the Twin Towers (1993) involved the use of fertilizer bombs, reflecting the expertise of Ramzi Youssef. Judicial Watch also indicates that Interpol had linked Ramzi Youssef to the Oklahoma City bombing, as well.

    Certainly, Timothy McVeigh was one of the guilty parties in a truly horrific episode in American history, of that I have no doubt. But the Oklahoma City bombing case should be thoroughly re-evaluated by the Bush Justice Department in light of the suppressed materials, and the emerging information under development.

    There are countless other stories -- from Los Angeles (twice), to London, from the liberal Salon, to the right-wing NewsMax, to the far-right WorldNetDaily (at least twice). TalkLeft explores this tantalizing theory -- even comparing photograph of Jose Padilla with the police sketch of "John Doe 2."

    Then there's Oklahoma City journalist Jayna Davis -- whose reporting had to be vindicated in court! (Getting sued is quite a deterrent for most journalists, no matter how interested they are in a story....) But hey, some of those stubborn Oklahoma journalists just won't stop digging!

    And what did happen to Senator Arlen Specter's investigation? Does anyone know?

    Of course, there are also articles denying the allegations in these reports: here's one by a member of McVeigh's "federal appellate team". Indymedia scoffs at any McVeigh Iraq connection too!

    Then there's this intriguing comment by McVeigh himself:

    Remember Dresden? How about Hanoi? Tripoli? Baghdad? What about the big ones -- Hiroshima and Nagasaki? (At these two locations, the U.S. killed at least 150,000 non-combatants -- mostly women and children -- in the blink of an eye. Thousands more took hours, days, weeks, or months to die.)

    If Saddam is such a demon, and people are calling for war crimes charges and trials against him and his nation, why do we not hear the same cry for blood directed at those responsible for even greater amounts of "mass destruction" -- like those responsible and involved in dropping bombs on the cities mentioned above?

    The truth is, the U.S. has set the standard when it comes to the stockpiling and use of weapons of mass destruction.

    Hypocrisy when it comes to death of children? In Oklahoma City, it was family convenience that explained the presence of a day-care center placed between street level and the law enforcement agencies which occupied the upper floors of the building. Yet when discussion shifts to Iraq, any day-care center in a government building instantly becomes "a shield." Think about that.

    (Actually, there is a difference here. The administration has admitted to knowledge of the presence of children in or near Iraqi government buildings, yet they still proceed with their plans to bomb -- saying that they cannot be held responsible if children die. There is no such proof, however, that knowledge of the presence of children existed in relation to the Oklahoma City bombing.)

    When considering morality and mens rea [criminal intent] in light of these facts, I ask: Who are the true barbarians?

    [NOTE: The above comes from a site which claims to have been regularly in touch with McVeigh. While McVeigh was a known Iraqi sympathizer, I have no way of verifying the authenticity of the above. Nor time.... Besides, I haven't had time to analyze the owl wars in my backyard!]

    McVeigh's (well, his alleged) moral equivalency masterpiece was written in 1998 -- and directed at Clinton. (Interesting too, how leftists have also tried to blame Gulf War I for OKC.)

    Had Timmy lived, he could now be writing for Indymedia -- or MoveOn.org!

    Well why not? Besides, the McVeigh execution always seemed a bit hurried to me. (Allegations that his conviction was aided by false testimony emerged in May. Too late for a stay of execution now, eh?)

    The most common reason given for hurrying the execution was "closure" -- said to be synonymous with the needs of McVeigh's victims. McVeigh's lawyer, Steven Jones, is someone I can't just ignore, and he simply, steadfastly, refuses to shut up:

    The execution of Timothy McVeigh helped bring a feeling of closure to the family and friends of the 168 people killed in 1995 in the Oklahoma City bombing. But McVeigh's lawyer, Stephen Jones, cautions that if the government thinks it convicted the chief suspect in the Oklahoma City bombing, it got the wrong man.

    "I believe Timothy McVeigh's role in the Oklahoma City bombing was a very minor one," Jones said. "A member of the conspiracy? Yes. The leader? No. The financier? No. The organizer? No. Timothy McVeigh saw his role as the cover for everybody else, to be the person to fall on the sword. It served deep-seated emotional needs that he had, and it furthered the role of the conspiracy."

    Ever since the McVeigh trial, Jones has accused the federal government of a cover-up, and indeed, the government was found to have withheld 4,000 pages of evidence during the McVeigh trial.

    Comfortable lies sometimes offer more closure than uncomfortable truths. But believing a lie, or cutting off inquiry into the truth, simply to have "closure" -- that is not a logical approach.


    UPDATE: Walter in Denver emailed to say that Jeralyn Merritt (the 'we' at TalkLeft) was part of McVeigh's defense team.

    Fascinating stuff -- and very, very hard to ignore.

    posted by Eric at 04:20 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)




    Another portentous story involving death -- sexed up by the BBC?

    Will the BBC ever quit sexing up stories? I mean, it's one thing to report a death, but it just strikes me as degrading to get into gory, gooey details about exploding body gases and decomposition and stuff. But for the BBC, nothing is too personal. Will they never learn?

    Whale explodes in Taiwanese city

    A dead sperm whale has exploded while being delivered to a research centre near the southwestern city of Tainan.

    Passers-by and cars were soaked in blood and body parts were sprayed over a road after the bursting of the whale, which was being carried on a trailer.

    The whale had died earlier on a beach and had been collected so its remains could be used for educational purposes.

    A marine biologist blamed the explosion on pressure from gases building up in the mammal as it began to decompose.

    The whale attracted a lot of onlookers both before and after it exploded.

    Several parked cars and pedestrians got covered in blood when it exploded.

    Residents and shop owners wore masks while trying to clean up the spilt blood and entrails.

    "What a stinking mess. This blood and other stuff that blew out on the road is disgusting, and the smell is really awful," said one resident.

    The story even features a lurid picture of the disgusting mess -- showing the whale carcass on a truck, intestines dangling from the belly, blood and guts all over the street, with a bystander covering his face!

    Do we really need to see this?

    I remember when only tabloids engaged in such cheap journalism. In the interests of decency and modesty, I refuse to fisk the BBC story.

    Hat tip to Justin Case for pointing out this atrocity, which I would just as soon have missed. This blog does try to offer a classical perspective on the news, and occasionally I will analyze omens and portents the way a Roman soothsayer, an augur, or a haruspex might.

    What about the entrails? Did they show "favourable indications"?

    Lest you think I am kidding, it has been argued that the reading of entrails is at least as effective in determining truth as the modern polygraph!

    Entrails reading was a very complex procedure for predicting important future outcomes (like battles), and no self-respecting Roman general made military decisions without consulting the entrails-reading augurs. Nor did other leaders in Roman society hesitate to refer to entrails reading as a way to predict the future. Similarly, in North America, the polygraph is all too readily referred to whether the truth concerns some specific act (like the identity of a killer or rapist) or even some much less clear-cut issue (like whether Clarence Thomas sexually harassed Anita Hill over a decade before the date of the Senate investigation).
    Might there even be a connection with national security?

    Is the BBC now engaged in entrail reading as a search for truth? Or is this report a distraction?

    As noted by the Romans, the British have a long history of entrail reading.

    The Britons perished in the flames, which they themselves had kindled. The island fell, and a garrison was established to retain it in subjection. The religious groves, dedicated to superstition and barbarous rites, were leveled to the ground. In those recesses, the natives [stained] their altars with the blood of their prisoners, and in the entrails of men explored the will of the gods. While Suetonius was employed in making his arrangements to secure the island, he received intelligence that Britain had revolted, and that the whole province was up in arms.

    Yeccchhh!

    The story is not over!

    At least one blogger has already shared his thoughts on this story, and points out that exploding whales are nothing new. He links to this actual whale explosion on video.

    The best pictures I could find of the Taiwanese incident are here and here. (Via Metafilter.)

    Here's a blogger who argues the exploding whale is proof that "those who fail to learn from history being destined to repeat it." Another commented that the whale had a huge penis.

    OK, OK! So it's a sperm whale!




    Now for the REAL thing....

    Let's get serious.

    Last night two owls -- a barn owl and a barred owl (I know them by their calls) -- were fighting quite loudly in my yard. I am deadly serious.

    More work is needed.

    Whether in ancient or modern times, few animals are as loaded with supernatural significance as the owl.

    Details of how to interpret such omens are tough to come by; this discussion by Cicero and others is the best I could find. Nothing on owls fighting, although two owls would have to mean two omens. Both were at night and to my left, which is good.

    The owl is associated with Minerva, goddess of wisdom.

    Here's a more modern fix on owls:

    The Owl has a dual symbolism of wisdom and darkness, the latter meaning evil and death. They are symbolically associated with clairvoyance, astral projection and magick, and is oftentimes the medicine of sorcerers and witches, you are drawn to magickal practices. Those who have owl medicine will find that these night birds will tend to collect around you, even in daytime, because they recognise a kinship with you.

    The two main symbolic characteristics of the Owl, its wisdom and its nocturnal activity-- have made it represent perception. Considering perception in a spiritual context, Owl medicine is related to psychism, occult matters, instincts, and clairvoyance-- the true ability to see what is happening around you.

    The owl can see that which others cannot, which is the essence of true wisdom. Where others are deceived, Owl sees and knows what is there.

    Use your power of keen, silent observation to intuit some life situation, Owl is befriending you and aiding you in seeing the whole truth. The Owl also brings its messages in the night through dreams or meditation. Pay attention to the signals and omens. The truth always brings further enlightenment.

    The Owl, symbol of the Goddess, represents perfect wisdom. Owls have the ability to see in the dark and fly noiselessly through the skies. They bring messages through dreams. The Owl is the bird of mystical wisdom and ancient knowledge of the powers of the moon. With wide-open, all-seeing eyes, Owl looks upon reality without distortion and acknowledges it, yet is aware that with ancient magickal and spiritual knowledge, he or she can make changes.

    But different species of owls fighting?

    Try as I might, I can find nothing!

    Anyone out there?


    UPDATE: Lest anyone think that divining (or predicting the future based on animal behavior) died with the Romans, it was alive and well yesterday.

    posted by Eric at 11:03 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)



    Conquering the universe -- one planet at a time!

    This is a special day at Classical Values. World Blogosphere Peace has finally been achieved!

    PEACE IN OUR TIME!

    Therefore today's online tests are offered in the spirit of Globalism, maybe even Universalism!




    It's a relief that the Blog War is over and I can devote my efforts to World Peace, because this first test indicated that I might be a lover of war!



    You Belong in Pearl Harbor. You are a strong person
    who fights what you believe in. Although you
    will ultimately win, your life may be full of
    tragedy.


    Which movie do you belong in? clh
    brought to you by Quizilla

    Via etonline.com.)

    Phew! What a relief that war was averted!




    Obviously, to achieve a lasting world peace, one must first rule the world. And from Dave Tepper I discovered how I am going to do that via a wonderful test -- "How Would YOU Take Over the World?"

    PEACE THROUGH FIRE!


    How Would YOU Take Over the World?

    Hey, all I can say is "BURN BABY BURN!"




    Thanks to bilious young fogey, I also have a clear picture of my strategy so far. The following countries are all mapped out as MINE:



    create your own visited country map
    or write about it on the open travel guide


    As Churchill said when a group of angry temperance advocates protested that the amount of booze he consumed would fill most of the room, "So much to do; So little done."




    NOTE: Readers not interested in globalism can also create their own map of the United States. Here's mine:



    create your own visited states map
    or write about it on the open travel guide


    Via Sasha Volokh and Ghost of a flea -- whose maps do not match. And please note that in real life, the Flea is way ahead of most of us in terms of world domination. Check out his Hall of Power.




    But what about the Universe?

    Might science be able to help me?

    According to an astrological test, I need to start by finding Pisces:

    Pisces
    You should be dating Pisces.
    19 February - 20 March
    Your mate is loving and caring, trusting and
    hospitable, and romantic. Though he/she can be
    self-pitying, temperamental or dependent, the
    fishes are quite romantic in bed.


    What Zodiac Sign Are You Attracted To?
    brought to you by Quizilla

    (Via Empress)

    But where is Pisces? According to this site, it's way up above some cactus somewhere. Now if I could just find that darned cactus I'd be all set to go out on a date!




    Well, if that picture is accurate, Pisces looks pretty far away. Maybe I should get closer to the earth. This final test -- "Which Fairy are you?" -- says I am a "Moon Fairy"! That's not fair, really, because I just made fun of gay moonies in a comment to my last post, and I don't like Reverend Moon (who I think oughta be nuked!). But it's getting late so I guess I'm stuck with this silly result:


    7
    Moon Fairy
    Please rate my quiz thanks for taking my quiz


    Which Fairy are you?(for anyone many out comes)
    brought to you by Quizilla

    Via etonline.com.)

    There are two views on how best to utilize the moon. But both sides agree: the moon is the key to world peace!

    posted by Eric at 06:22 PM | TrackBacks (0)




    SILENCE = DEATH?

    ....NEVER AGAIN!

    A recent post by my blogfather highlights an issue which, unfortunately, is not being addressed as it should by the so-called "gay movment":

    ...[I]n Germany, Islamists (you know, followers of the religion of peace) are attacking gays. And since it's "taboo" to ever say anything critical of Islam, the events go mostly unreported and discussed.
    Other than blogs by gay gun nuts, where are American gays supposed to go to read about such things as Islamic attacks and Islamic attitudes on homosexuality? Do they have to have to read WorldNetDaily? (That last article is a must read, by the way!)

    Well, why isn't the mainstream "gay movement" giving these things the attention they should?

    Why is there so much silence about Islamic sodomy Laws and homosexuality?

    Let's start by taking a look at the map of world sodomy laws.

    In many Islamic countries (especially those under Shariah Law), the penalty for homosexuality is death. This should not surprise anyone who does the most minimal research into so-called "Islamic Law" -- especially as promulgated by "traditionalists." This, a translation from Ibn Taymiya, is typical:

    The Companions of the prophet did not vary in opinion as to putting the sodomite to deathm, but they did differ about the form of death he was to suffer. It is related from Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, may Allah bless him, that he should be burned, others said that he should simply be put to death. Some others said that a wall should be caused to fall on him so that he might die under the falling stones. Others said that both the active and the passive sodomites should be shut up in the most rotten place until they died. Some said that he should be lifted to the highest wall in the neighbourhood and then thrown down and stones thrown at him, as Allah did to the people of Lot. This is one (saying) related by Ibn 'Abbas. Another, related also by him, is that the sodomite is to be stoned. This latter view is agreed upon by most of the early jurists from the pure analogy of the stoning of the people of Lot (with stones from Heaven).
    Here's some background on Ibn Taymiya -- a man considered the father of Wahhabist Islam.

    Jeff linked to this German story, which gives the following reason for the official silence about anti-gay attacks by Muslims:

    the nearness of Islam to violence and oppression against minorities remains a taboo topic in Germany.
    I guess that shouldn't be terribly surprising.

    What is surprising is that American gay rights leaders downplay Islam's uniquely pathological, genocidal hatred towards homosexuals.

    Here's Michelangelo Signorile, who, right after admitting that homosexuals are routinely put to death by Islamic governments, compares their struggle to that of gay Christians in the United States:

    Like gay and lesbian Christians in this country who are embroiled in their own war with the religious right, Sulayman X and other gay Muslims maintain that Islam is being misused. “Islam is an elegant, simple religion that values humankind and places much emphasis on the here and now—creating just societies,” he says. “Islam has been hijacked by extremists, and when you read about Muslims in the newspaper, invariably it’s about Muslims who are killing people or resorting to violence to get what they want. But that’s not Islam. That’s people using Islam as a political tool to achieve political ends.”
    Sorry, but I have to ask one question.

    Is it really fair to compare the fate of being stoned or burned to death, or being crushed by walls, to the struggle over things like gay marriage?

    Another group of gay activists against Israel compares the murderous Palestinian Authority to the City of San Francisco:

    Palestine is by no means unique in being a place where gay people are threatened, abused or tortured by the police. It happens in every western society, including in San Francisco. Palestinian queers are also not alone in being in danger in the small conservative towns and villages where their families live, or in being threatened with violence from their own families.
    Lest anyone think they spend their time targeting Islamic Law, their most visible target has been Starbucks!
    The group selected Starbucks for the location of their first settlement in Berkeley because Starbucks founder and CEO, Howard Shultz, is a major supporter of the Israeli state and the corporation has become the prime target of an international boycott of corporations with ties to Israel (http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-israel.html). “Since Mr. Shultz clearly believes it is okay for one group of people to grab land belonging to another and say they have a right to it, we figure he won’t mind if we take some of his,” a QUIT leaflet explains.

    Workers in the café were surprisingly unruffled as the Queer Defense Forces entered the café and announced over a loudspeaker that the land had been confiscated by the Queer National Fund and curfew for straights would begin in five minutes.

    Several “patrons” were forcibly ejected from the café by means of SuperSoakers (which were especially popular with a three-year-old settler). Many coffee drinkers quickly cleared out, but one group of chess players steadfastly ignored the group, who vow to set up more settlements in the coming months.

    Fortunately, this swinish behavior didn't go unnoticed in the blogosphere. Little Green Footballs commented wryly that activist Kate Raphael (QUIT's cause celebre):
    fights for the rights of those who want to execute lesbians and gays by stoning.
    Need I remind my readers about the fate of homosexuals in Palestine?
    According to Halevi, one young man discovered to be gay was forced by Palestinian Authority police "to stand in sewage water up to his neck, his head covered by a sack filled with feces, and then he was thrown into a dark cell infested with insects." During one interrogation Palestinian police stripped him and forced him to sit on a Coke bottle.

    When he was released he fled to Israel. If he were forced to return to Gaza, he said, "The police would kill me."

    An American who foolishly moved into the West Bank to live with his Palestinian lover said they told everyone they were just friends, but one day they "found a letter under our door from the Islamic court. It listed the five forms of death prescribed by Islam for homosexuality, including stoning and burning. We fled to Israel that same day," he said.

    The head of a Tel Aviv gay organization told Halevi, "The persecution of gays in the Palestinian Authority doesn't just come from the families or the Islamic groups, but from the P.A. itself."

    Palestinian police have increasingly enforced Islamic religion law, he said: "It's now impossible to be an open gay in the P.A." He recalled that one gay man in the Palestinian police went to Israel for a short time. When he returned to the West Bank, Palestinian Authority police confined him to a pit without food or water until he died.

    A 17-year-old gay youth recalled that he spent months in a Palestinian Authority prison "where interrogators cut him with glass and poured toilet cleaner into his wounds."

    Why the silence by gay activists? Is there a lesson to be learned from the fate of openly gay Pim Fortuyn?

    Just as musical silences can be as eloquent as any note struck, political silences can speak volumes. The silence of America's national gay organizations after the assassination of gay Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn is revealing. Let me summarize it this way: If you are gay and perceived to be on the political right, do not send to know for whom the bell tolls. It does not toll for thee.

    Fortuyn, an outspoken defender of the rights of gays and women against intolerant Muslims who enjoy his country's public benefits while attacking its values, was widely and falsely characterized by news reports as a racist, right-wing extremist -- despite the racial diversity in his own party. Responding to media distortions is normally the stock in trade of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, yet in this prominent case GLAAD has had nothing to say.

    The Human Rights Campaign has been quick to issue press releases and organize vigils when it connected the killings of gay people to a climate of hate. Yet now, when an openly gay candidate is murdered after being demonized by establishment politicians and journalists, HRC is silent. And the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which considered the Persian Gulf War a vital gay issue, sees no relevance when a man who stood a good chance of becoming the world's first openly gay head of government is savagely cut down.

    Hmmmm.....

    Whatever happened to the slogan "SILENCE = DEATH"?

    At least I can trust that gay gun nuts like my blogfather will refuse to live under this deadly veil of silence.

    Lastly, I have an idea. An old idea, really. But I think it's right for the times. I don't want the Islamic bigots and their supporters to imagine that the Pink Triangle can ever be used the way the Nazis used it.

    So I offer a modest revision.

    PTM.gif

    Thanks Jeff! (Sorry for the poor quality; I wish I knew how to use PhotoShop!)


    UPDATE: A talented PhotoShopper just came to my rescue! Sol at Solomonia sent me this note along with a gif:

    Was a bit bored so I made you a graphic. I'm not that great with Photoshop, either, but I thought what the hell. One's a .gif with a transparent background, the other is a .jpg. The AK says terrorist to me, so I did more of a "good guy" weapon. ;)
    Here it is:

    coltpink.gif

    Wish I could do that! Thank you Sol! As to the "good guy" issue, well, even though many of the good guys traded their Colts for Kalashnikovs, what I think would really be a "good guy" weapon would be the Galil!)

    Readers should check out Sol's blog; one of the most fascinating things I have ever seen is there right now: a very realistic baby dragon in formaldehyde.

    Here's what the poor thing must have looked like when it was alive:

    mon5.gif

    MORE: Sol just outdid himself by supplying a Galil!

    galilpink.gif

    I declare Sol the winner of this contest! And CHECK OUT SOL'S LINK!

    Wow!

    UPDATE: Wow is right! My sincerest thanks to Roger L. Simon for kindly linking to this post, and adding his own invaluable insight:

    ...[W]e are engaged in a War on Islamofascism (or Islamism--call it what you will). The real question is--is this war (honestly named) worth fighting? To believe that, which I do, you have to believe that we are engaged on some level in a War of Civilizations against a dangerous ideology. Scheie's post, which is about the violent discrimination against gays under Sharia where homosexuality is punishable by death, speaks directly to this question. A vast proportion of the Islamic world does not share our view of basic human rights (women's equality, separation of church and state, etc.) and, to make matters worse, does not wish to coexist with us on this subject. I think these rights are worth fighting to preserve and, yes, to extend.
    Precisely why gays are hated; their very existence is a reminder of the natural right to be different, and NOT to follow the herd -- which is the essence of simple human freedom.

    Thank you Roger!

    posted by Eric at 05:50 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (3)




    Yeeeaaagh! Time to crash?

    Didn't Howard Dean perform a remarkable imitation of the classic Confederate "rebel yell"? That last link (a blog called "Rebel Yell") links to an intriguing musical rendition of Dean's "Rebel Yell" by Lileks. Here's another blogger (from Vermont), who spoke of "Southern disComfort."

    But to be fair, Joshua Micah Marshall gave Ashcroft credit for the term a few years ago.

    Beats me; I am only trying to be fair. And balanced.

    Many bloggers (as well as innumerable commenters) have called Dean's "Eaaggh" the Rebel Yell. I can't possibly list them all, but I tend to agree with a sentiment repeated in that last blog:

    As Dave Winer said to me earlier today on the phone, the media is trying to "delete" the Dean campaign.

    Much as I personally enjoyed the Rebel Yell fun, I think Dean got a bum rap -- and there was a good explanation (called "worth reading" by Glenn Reynolds) for the yell itself.

    The contrarian in me (as well as the lover of lost causes) likes Howard Dean more and more. I particularly hated that sleazy New York Times smear against his wife. While not much of a Howard Dean supporter, I know a hit piece when I see it. And the Times article was a classic hit piece. Author Judi Wilgoren, by the way, is a past expert at hit pieces.... They had the bad camera angle, the nasty personal innuendo, and they made Dr. Steinberg (about whom I've heard nothing but good things) appear glum and aloof, if not weird. (You have to pay for the article now, unfortunately.)

    What was she supposed to do? Abandon her practice and go to Iowa to smile at the cameras?

    That the attack comes from the left made it far more hypocritical. I mean, I could have imagined certain Republicans complaining that Dr. Steinberg is not living up to someone's idea of a "role model," but this?

    I doubt Abraham Lincoln could be elected president today -- not if they decided to smear his wife. On top of that, there was also the cleverly timed, phony domestic abuse report about one of Dean's state troopers. Why, they even used Watergate language to sex up the piece -- "What Did He Know About Abuse Allegations; When Did He Know It?" (Via Andrew Sullivan.) Couldn't they have used "Troopergate"? Or was that taken? And why did so many pundits keep making the Freudian slip (well, it is a form of sexual innuendo) of calling him John Dean? (Now there's a real smear for you!)

    This whole thing has been a lesson in the fickleness of voters. It shows how easily manipulated people can be.

    That's democracy, sometimes.

    I think I'm gonna crash..... But before I do, here is something that I can identify with as a Californian "stuck" on the East Coast. (It's worth streaming, most fun when opened in a new window to see it all.... and reminds me of close calls around here, and my frustration when cars fail to behave in a logical manner because of frozen water.)

    The streaming link was sent to me in an email along with a caption titled "Union Civil Engineers should never impersonate mechanical engineers..."

    Well, so much for the North, and for Union Civil Engineers. But what about impersonating Confederate Civil Engineers?

    I think some of them may be on thin ice down there....




    I'll thaw, chill out, and take a "break" while I read up on the latest Carnival of the Vanities.

    And anyone who wants to hear an actual rebel yell (recorded in 1935 by a 90 year old Confederate vet) can stream it at this link.

    posted by Eric at 11:04 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)



    In search of a "good" disease....

    Time for a change in pace! Besides, I have been steeped in online research, so I might as well share the results. Hope I don't bore my regular readers (nor any of the valued newcomers), because after all, this is not a veterinary blog!

    Last week, my dog Puff (the 14 year old pit bull) had what seemed to be two strokes. One day, he was out in the yard, and suddenly dropped on his side and went into convulsions, kicking and shaking, then lying still in the snow. I ran out and he was limp, glassy-eyed, but breathing. I honestly thought he was in the throes of dying, but I wouldn't allow him to lie there in the snow, so I picked him up to carry him in. The lifting and walking seemed to awaken his equilibrium, and suddenly he stopped being limp, focused his eyes, and came to. I bundled him in a blanket, and after a couple of hours, it was as if nothing had happened. But then a couple of days later, he was just sitting on his favorite chair, and without warning had another seizure. Same deal; I thought he was going to die, then he came out of it.

    Naturally, I took him to the vet on Monday. The vet said he had something in his lungs, and had me listen to the the rales in his chest. Blood tests revealed low platelets, and mild anemia.

    The pattern is consistent with lung cancer, and a veterinary internist advised my vet that X-rays would probably reveal growths.

    I felt sick. But I decided to put off "dealing with it" until I absolutely knew that there was something to deal with.

    Well, the X-rays were inconclusive, revealing no obvious growths. The films have been forwarded to a consulting radiologist. Meanwhile, Puff was started on Amoxicillin, and now, on his second day, I have noticed improvement in his health. Less coughing, more relaxed sleep.

    Today I was told that Puff's titer for Lyme Disease is elevated. Yet his symptoms are not a match for Lyme Disease (which he has had before).

    "There are a million things it could be," my vet stated.

    Intrigued by all of this, I decided to use the Internet, and discovered a disease which is a match-up for Puff's three symptoms (and more): low platelets, neurological symptoms, and cough.

    It's called Ehrlichiosis. While symptoms vary, according to this site,

    A decrease in the number of platelets (platelets help the blood clot) in the blood is the most common laboratory finding in all phases of the disease.
    Erhlichiosis is not transmitted directly from dogs to humans, but from the ticks. Here is an X-ray of infected human lungs, showing the characteristic "patchy infltrates" caused by the disease.

    I know you're just dying to read more geeky stuff about Ehrlichiosis! So, here's an excellent description of its pathogenesis:

    Pathogenesis of Ehrlichiosis

    The pathogenesis of infection with E. canis is the most extensively studied; therefore this discussion will focus on this particular species.

    Infection occurs through salivary secretions of the tick at the attachment site during ingestion of a blood meal or through blood transfusions. If the adult Rhipicephalus sanguineus engorges on the dog during the acute stage, it can transmit the disease to other dogs for at least 155 days following detachment.1 Transmission by Rhipicephalus sanguineus is transstadial: the tick acquires the bacteria by feeding on an infected dog in either the larvae or nymph form and the tick transmits the disease to another dog as either the nymph or adult form. The life cycle of Ehrlichia is not yet completely understood but it is thought that it occurs in three intracellular forms. The initial bodies are small spherical structures (1-2 micrometers in diameter) which are believed to develop into larger multiple membrane-bound units known as morulae. The morulae are inclusions within the cytoplasm of the leukocyte as seen in Figure 1. This morula is thought to then dissociate into small granules called elementary bodies.

    Figure 1 (click here to see). Ehrlichia canis seen in a membrane-bound inclusions (morulae) within the cytoplasm of a monocyte (buffy coat smear, Wright stain).

    After an incubation period of 8-20 days, the acute phase of infection occurs which lasts 2-4 weeks. At this time, the organism multiplies within circulating mononuclear cells and the mononuclear phagocytes within the liver, spleen, and lymph nodes. The infected cells are then transported in circulation to the rest of the body, with a predilection for the the lungs, kidneys and meninges. Cells infected with ehrlichia adhere to the vascular endothelium and induce a vasculitis and subendothelial tissue infection. This subsequently leads to platelet consumption, sequestration, and destruction that results in the thrombocytopenia seen during this acute phase. Variable leukocyte counts and anemia may also develop progressively during this stage.1 After 6-9 weeks, dogs will either eliminate the parasite (if immunocompetent) or develop a parasitemia in which clinical signs absent to mild to severe. This stage is also characterized by variable persistence of thrombocytopenia, leukopenia, and anemia. Dogs that cannot mount an effective immune response will become chronically infected.1

    Geeks as well as non-geeks might be interested to know that the origin of Ehrlichiosis in the United States has been traced not to Paul Ehrlich -- but to military dogs brought back from Vietnam:
    Because of its origin in military dogs in Vietnam, it has also been called "tracker dog disease" and "tropical canine pancytopenia.
    Puff has not been tested for this yet, so I don't know for certain that he has it. But the antibiotics seem to be doing something -- so I am praying that it is Lyme, Ehrlichiosis (the two can work in combination) or another "good" (meaning treatable) disease.

    Puff felt good enough today to charge out in the snow in search of his "Kong" toy, which he had to dig from the vast pile of snowflakes in which it landed.

    In light of some of the comments to my post on the Iraq/al Qaida connection, I guess I should provide actual evidence supporting my claim that Puff has improved.

    So here's proof for all doubting Thomases -- two photos taken within the last half hour!
    PuffRuns.jpg
    PuffKong.jpg

    posted by Eric at 04:28 PM | TrackBacks (0)



    Activists always know what's best for the rest!

    Has the country evolved to the point where there is seething mutual contempt between party activists (said to be the "base" of each major party) and the great, soft-"l"-libertarian majority?

    While it may be premature to say this, it now appears that Democratic party activists are driving their party into a hopeless "Iraq = Vietnam" quagmire. Ironically, this was a major objection to the Dean candidacy.

    Republican activists, on the other hand, strike me as hell bent on ignoring Arnold Schwarzenegger's victory -- because they fear what it represents. They are spearheading a sour-grapes, show-of-strength, movement to unseat Arlen Specter, which, if it is successful, will replace a Republican with a Democrat. They would rather have Democrats win than sacrifice their "principles." They do not want Bush reelected. Some of them are now actively promoting an insurgency movement which states that explicitly:

    A conservative activist who has worked to help the Bush-Cheney campaign but asked not to be identified said many people with whom he talks are beginning to justify in their minds a one-term Bush presidency.

    "As long as Republicans and conservatives keep the Congress, we can lose the White House," the activist said. "Let Karl Rove put that in his pipe and smoke it, because we can use the Congress to block a Democratic president's judges and initiatives." (Via Parapundit)

    While I see the point about immigration (I have warned about it), I am not a party loyalist, and I have drifted around from party to party, never feeling comfortable with either camp, as I am uncomfortable with activists and their agendas.

    "Needlessly provocative!" said Justin Case, when I ran this latest news past him. "Stinks of ideological purity!" (Sorry, Justin, but I had to insert the exclamation points, for effect!)

    Is Mikhail Suslov their spiritual advisor? (Whoops, I take that back; Suslov was godless!)

    Speaking of ideological purity, one of the big, respectable bloggers has delivered the following threat:

    If you link to "Wonkette" through your blogroll you cannot and will not enjoy, for what that might be worth, a link from The Rittenhouse Review. (Via Glenn Reynolds.)
    This otherwise excellent blogger called Wonkette a "despicable cretin."

    Sorry, but that's too much for me. I am often slower than I should be, which is one of my problems. I write long-winded essays, and it takes me time to catch up on doing things like placing links to deserving blogs. I just discovered (and linked to) Wonkette the other day, but I hadn't thought to add her to my blogroll. Just too busy, I guess. But if there's one thing I understand, it's a threat. Intimidation is something I saw for years -- before, during, and after my squalid little career as a low level political appointee, and I don't like it. I consider it unworthy of the Blogosphere, so I am linking to Wonkette right now!

    Hear me Rittenhouse Review! Wonkette is good! An excellent, amusing, refreshingly new blogger.

    As to what she said about Media Whores Online, well, I couldn't help but notice that they link to Ted Rall.

    I'll take an honest whore over Ted Rall any day.

    And I will strive to keep this blog as ideologically impure as practically possible.

    UPDATE: Larry Purpuro's characterization of bloggers as "armchair analysts in their bathrobes (with) no serious interest in leaving their living rooms to actually help with the campaigns" (via Glenn Reynolds) reminds me of the obnoxious smear of "chickenhawk" popular in the last year. Another ad hominem attack; logically, whether someone helps in a campaign has nothing to do with the truth of what he says. (And to the extent that it might, the effect of working for a campaign would be detrimental to the blogger's credibility -- even more than would his wearing of bathroom attire. And besides, not all bloggers wear bathrobes!)

    The assumptions made by Mr. Purpuro are remarkable. In my short life as a blogger, I've seen bloggers criticized and condemned for many things, but their alleged failure to help with campaigns takes the cake. Start with the most common complaint -- that bloggers aren't "real" journalists. Would Mr. Purpuro slam real journalists for failing to help with campaigns? I suspect that if any of them did so, Mr. Purpuro would claim that they had lost "journalistic objectivity." Certainly, one could launch a similar attack on any blogger who worked for a campaign.

    Is blogging a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't deal?

    posted by Eric at 12:41 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (1)




    Unsettling update on an unsettled issue

    Supposedly discredited reports about the connections between Al Qaida and Saddam Hussein just won't die.

    Last month, Glenn Reynolds linked to (while taking care to express healthy caution about) a Telegraph story about a possible Abu Nidal connection to Al Qaida, and I added my two cents worth. Shortly thereafter, Glenn Reynolds reported Michael Isikoff's claim that the story was based on a forgery. As a blogger without access to Isikoff's inside sources, I figured that the big guys like Isikoff knew more than I did.

    But now there's more -- "on the growing dossier of evidence linking the Iraqi dictator to the 9/11 attacks."

    Though the Bush administration has strenuously looked the other way on one blockbuster development after another, the 9/11 file on Baghdad has grown to include:

  • A memo from Iraqi intelligence uncovered by the London Sunday Telegraph last month stating that lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta had completed his training regimen in Baghdad under the tutelage of notorious Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal. The memo was dated just two months before the World Trade Center attacks.

    In one passage, the Iraqi intelligence chief reportedly informs Saddam that Atta had demonstrated his capability as leader of the team "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy."

  • A Defense Department memo detailing over 50 contacts between senior officials in Iraq and Osama bin Laden's minions going back to the 1980s. According to a November 2003 report in the Weekly Standard, the memo cites evidence that Ahmed al Ani, the Iraqi intelligence chief in Czechoslovakia, "ordered the [Iraqi Intelligence Service] finance officer to issue [Mohamed] Atta funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office."
  • A Wall Street Journal report linking Flight 93 hijacker Ziad Jarrah to Abu Nidal, who had reportedly helped train his 9/11 partner Mohamed Atta. "A constant figure in Jarrah's life in Germany was his great-uncle, Assem Omar Jarrah," the Journal said. "According to the German magazine, Der Spiegel, Assem Jarrah worked for a long time as an informer for the Stasi, the East German secret service, while maintaining connections to [Abu] Nidal's terror group."

    Eleven months after the 9/11 attacks, Nidal was executed in Baghdad by Saddam's secret police in what many believe was an attempted cover-up of Iraq's 9/11 complicity.

  • A Nov. 11, 2001, report in the London Observer citing the accounts of two Iraqi defectors who say they helped train radical Islamists to overcome U.S. flight crews using only small knives - a technique never used before 9/11 - at Iraq's Salman Pak terrorist training facility.

    Sabah Khodada, one of the defectors, told PBS's "Frontline" that he believed the 9/11 attacks had been executed "by graduates of Salman Pak."

    While the defectors' accounts were widely reported at the time, the media later dropped the story as the Bush administration built its WMD case against Iraq.

  • U.S. satellite photos confirming the existence of a Boeing 707 fuselage that Khodada and his partner say was used as a hijacking classroom. U.N. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who was tapped on Friday to succeed David Kay, corroborated their account.

    "We reported [the Salman Pak hijacking drills] at the time, but they've obviously taken on new significance" after the 9/11 attacks, Duelfer told USA Today at the time.

  • A May 7, 2003, decision by Manhattan U.S. District Judge Harold Baer, who awarded $104 million to two families of 9/11 victims based on the testimony of Khodada, Duelfer and former CIA Director James Woolsey, as well as other evidence presented to his court.

    In his opinion Judge Baer wrote that the case was "sufficient to meet plaintiffs' burden that Iraq collaborated in or supported bin Laden/al Qaeda's terrorist acts of September 11."

  • The account of former CIA Director Woolsey, whose testimony was summarized by Judge Baer thusly:

    "Director Woolsey described the existence of a highly secure military facility in Iraq where non-Iraqi fundamentalists [e.g., Egyptians and Saudis] are trained in airplane hijacking and other forms of terrorism. Through satellite imagery and the testimony of three Iraqi defectors, plaintiffs demonstrated the existence of this facility, called Salman Pak, which has an airplane but no runway."

    Judge Baer continued: "The defectors also stated that these fundamentalists were taught methods of hijacking using utensils or short knives. Plaintiffs contend it is farfetched to believe that Iraqi agents trained fundamentalists in a top-secret facility for any purpose other than to promote terrorism."

  • The failure to turn up Saddam's weapons of mass destruction is being called a stunning intelligence failure. But the far more startling intelligence blunder may turn out to be the Bush administration's decision not to spotlight reams of compelling evidence tying Iraq to 9/11.

    (Hat tip to the G. Gordon Liddy Show for disclosing the above link.)

    I can't shake my original suspicion about the timing of Abu Nidal's "suicide."

    Obviously, I cannot state that I know there was a connection. But when I see this stuff being ignored by the major media, I refuse to remain silent.

    If it turns out there's a big media or government coverup going on, I would not be surprised.

    It wouldn't be the first time.


    UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking to this post!

    Newcomers, thank you for coming, and I hope you enjoy the blog.

    A commenter below has just pointed out Stephen F. Hayes' detailed report -- "Case Closed: The U.S. government's secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden" -- in the Weekly Standard. Hayes concludes:

    [T]here can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans.
    Hmmmmm.....

    The case is "closed"? Is that why there's such a deafening silence in the major media?

    posted by Eric at 06:05 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (2)




    An anti-war general beats an anti-war lieutenant!

    I know this will sound stupid, but at the risk of that (and at the risk of being repetitive) I am going to say it anyway: Wesley Clark is a better candidate than John Kerry.

    The theme -- of an anti-war warrior -- makes Clark and Kerry roughly the equivalent of each other. But let's look at which man carries more baggage.

    Kerry, an antiwar leftist of the Vietnam school, is a Vietnam veteran with an exemplary combat record. But that seems to be his only song. Vietnam is old already, and by the time the election runs around, the Iraq-is-another-Vietnam harangue will be pretty tired, and pretty hollow. (It may be already.)

    Clark has committed some of stupidest gaffes in the race, and as I stated before he may already be finished. What this proves is he is not a slick politician, and that he needs better handlers. But his anti-war message is much more up-to-date than Kerry's. He should not have belittled Kerry's war record as he did, but that should not obscure a simple fact: the masses of voters would have far more respect for a four star general than a lieutenant on military matters. And if this election is going to be about the war in Iraq (itself a possibly mistaken strategy), then I think that the common sense of the voters would consider more carefully -- and take more seriously in the heart -- an antiwar message from a general than from a lieutenant.

    This may sound unfair, but I am afraid it is reality.

    The flaws of either man may be argued to death, and it may well be that neither can beat Bush. But I think Clark would have a better chance. Once the dust settles, if the theme is along the lines of "I'm a military man and I'm against the war!" Clark's rank will count for more with the voters.

    I think it boils down to simple math.

    Attacks on Clark for alleged "war crimes", while they may help Kerry now, only illustrate the shortsightedness of the Kerry strategy.

    I hate to sound overly Machiavellian (or overly Roman) and I don't wish to be seen as a Clark supporter, because I am not. But the stuff I pointed out before (Kerry's vintage anti-war activism) is, in 2004, a losing strategy.

    Clark is of course the hand-picked candidate of Bill Clinton or his wife, which is seen as a liability.

    Should it be? Is it thinking the unthinkable to ask whether Bill and Hill might be a little better at thinking ahead?

    I previously said,

    My money is still on Clark, because the anti-war general theme still seems like the best triangulation strategy.

    I know I've already lost my "money."

    (The election, however, is not mine to lose!)


    UPDATE: It's official now! Clark is history. (Via Glenn Reynolds.) Now it's time for me to make good on my bet, I guess....

    posted by Eric at 11:16 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)




    Indigestible tidbits....

    It's the end of a slow day in which I posted nothing because I was gone all day. So, rather than have a topic, it struck me that I might just ramble on about nothing in particular (a "safe" thing to do on a Sunday evening when people do not read blogs).

    Well, as I thought it over, I remembered some old business. I started a post a while back about one of the pressingly delicious issues of the day: Is it OK to kill and eat someone simply because you and the victim both agree?

    Cannibalism and murder by mutual consent?

    As the recent German cannibal case makes its way through the courts, some have opined that there is no difference between cannibalism, homosexuality and murder, and that when one is allowed, all are implicitly condoned (on some theory of "act according to your desires") -- and hence Western Civilization is doomed.

    Sasha Volokh links to this interesting challenge from Theodore Dalrymple:

    The case is a reductio ad absurdum of the philosophy according to which individual desire is the only thing that counts in deciding what is permissible in society. Brandes wanted to be killed and eaten; Meiwes wanted to kill and eat. Thanks to one of the wonders of modern technology, the Internet, they both could avoid that most debilitating of all human conditions, frustrated desire. What is wrong with that? Please answer from first principles only.
    A couple of blogs have already discussed the "first principles" aspect. Dalrymple, by presupposing that these principles (and only as he defines them) are controlling, would probably eliminate any argument I might offer.

    So this is not intended for him to read.

    But I will try to address his central premise (that homosexuality is cannibalism is murder is the end of the Western world....)

    Yeah -- and a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy!

    Since when has absolutism become equivalency? If homosexuality is not immoral, how does that make murder not immoral? And, from where comes the idea that the only argument in favor of homosexuality is based on individual desire?

    From where comes the argument that the prohibition of homosexuality is the glue that holds together all other prohibitions? That if homosexuality is tolerated, that it becomes OK to murder, rob or rape people? No one has yet been able to explain it to me. It simply defies logic, yet I hear it over and over.

    If we assume for the sake of argument that homosexuality is immoral, how does that make it as immoral as murder? If it does not, then how does legalizing homosexuality render murder acceptable any more than lowering of criminal penalties would?

    Might the argument depend on "sodomy" once having been considered a malum in se crime? The distinction between malum in se and malum prohibitum is often invoked to distinguish between crimes which harm others and what are known as "victimless crimes." Consensual sex between adults being inherently without a victim, the modern view is that laws against it would be malum prohibitum only. But in the old days, "sodomy" was considered inherently malum in se. (Some would argue that it still is.)

    I don't think that settles the question, though, because a variety of things are considered immoral, yet few would seriously maintain that they should be illegal. Lying, adultery, breaking the Sabbath, even coveting are a few examples.

    Certainly, there are plenty of other things generally considered to be immoral (cannibalism being one example), but does it necessarily follow from that that all who taste human flesh must be imprisoned?

    From where do people get the idea that whether something is immoral (or just bad for you) must determine whether it is illegal? Plenty of things are bad or immoral, but we don't put people in jail for them. Often left out of the abortion argument (by both sides) is the stubborn possibility that abortion might just be one of those inherently immoral things which society elects not to punish criminally. In any event, the legality of abortion is no argument for its morality, and more than the legalization of heroin (which I support) would render taking that drug a good thing to do.

    Might the fundamental disagreement be over whether morality should be internal, or imposed from above? Dalrymple cites Edmund Burke with approval for the latter proposition:

    "Men are qualified for freedom in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there is without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free."
    What should be the nature of the controlling power? And why can't men of "intemperate minds" nonetheless be free?

    Naturally, Dalrymple (and, doubtless, other fans of Burke) frame the cannibal-and-murder case as a reductio ad absurdum indictment of mutual consent. I don't think it is that simple. While I can understand that consent might apply to cannibalism alone, murder is entirely different. In my view, consent cannot be allowed to a murder charge, for a very good public policy reason: the victim is dead! If a defense of consent were allowed, then almost any murderer could swear that the victim asked to be killed -- and then the burden would be on the prosecution to prove a negative. John Wayne Gacy could have argued that his "victims" came to his house willingly, and asked to be tied up and strangled to death, as the best sexual high they could ever have experienced in their sordid lives as male prostitutes.

    No way. It is not in society's interest to allow a defense of consent to a murder charge. Doubtless, Mr. Dalrymple would dismiss this argument as "utilitarian" or "pragmatic" -- but much of the law is precisely that. So, I have no problem with charging and convicting the German cannibal of murder.

    As to cannibalism, it gets more complicated. Personally, I find cannibalism morally abhorrent, but I could envision limited situations where the government might not have any legitimate business enforcing criminal sanctions against it. Drinking placental soup under a doctor's orders would technically constitute cannibalism, and I doubt anyone would maintain that people should be imprisoned for it.

    How about a "cannibal club" which you could join, and agree to donate your body to the club -- to be eaten by the other members after your natural death? This might be immoral, but how does it benefit society to make it illegal? No harm is done to anyone, save the moral calluses which might result from partaking in human flesh.

    Furthermore, while I am no Biblical scholar, try as I might I am unable to come up with any condemnation of cannibalism in either the Old or New Testaments. However, some have argued that the Bible condones cannibalism. (Can anyone help me?)

    I have long been puzzled by the fact that moralists -- while often quick to condemn homosexuals for "harming" themselves (even though this is by no means associated with homosexuality per se) -- refuse to condemn mutual combat between two males. This despite the fact that boxing causes serious injuries, brain damage and occasional death. It is not harmless.

    Boxing, a recently revived sport of ancient Greece and Rome, was illegal for thirteen centuries -- as well as in the United States until the early 20th Century. It is still illegal in some countries, such as Sweden. In England there is a serious movement to make it illegal.

    Why no outcry from the American moralists about boxing being "a slippery moral slope"?

    Beats me! (Although I guess if there ever is such an outcry, I'll have to defend boxing as another "Classical Value".)

    What about bodily mutilation (now called "body modification")? Increasingly, people enjoy doing things like punching large holes through various bodily parts, even through cartilage, and amputation is not unheard of. This sounds decadent to most of us, although circumcision is still quite common.

    There is an interesting libertarian-type discussion of body modification here, and at this site, there is extensive discussion of the arrest of a well-known body mod artist on charges of violating new laws against female circumcision. Here is a site dedicated to eradicating the practice, while here, incredibly, is a web site for eunuchs!

    (I should warn you that some of those web sites contain some pretty gruesome, pretty disgusting stuff.)

    I haven't heard of any movement to prohibit cutting of body parts or castration, and the prohibition on female genital mutilation appears to be directed against parents who do that to their girls. Male circumcision remains legal, and as to laws pertaining to castration, I think all the authorities have are laws against practicing medicine without a license. Last April, a Detroit man was sentenced to four years in prison for performing unlicensed castrations on his kitchen table.

    Here's one site offering castration services for parents.

    Hey folks, even some of the Romans worried about cutting off parts of the sexual anatomy. Hadrian's attempts to prohibit castration (interpreted by authorities to prohibit Jewish circumcision) started a war over this stuff -- echoes of which resonate to this day.

    And what about circumcision? While mechanically similar to modern "body modification", it was originally intended to uphold the same Biblical morality that Dalrymple wants to uphold. Dalrymple even condemns tattooing (and would probably prohibit body modification), yet I can find no condemnation by him of male circumcision.

    In view of the decline in circumcision rates coupled with the apparent decline in standards of sexual "morality", couldn't Dalrymple and others argue that there is a statistical correlation between the decline in male circumcision and the decline of public morality?

    Did people in the old days know something?

    Let's see....

    How would the argument go?

    1. Masturbation causes homosexuality.

    2. Masturbation can be prevented through circumcision.

    3. As circumcision decreased, homosexuality and immorality increased!

    Right?

    Wrong, actually.

    It may sound counterintuitive, but according to this study, circumcision was associated with a higher incidence of masturbation, a higher incidence of oral sex, and even a higher incidence of homosexuality! (Of course, these statistical associations can be seen as running afoul of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. One would have to isolate other factors, such as income, race, culture, etc.)

    Obviously, analyzing this stuff could also get very Freudian. (Freud believed that circumcision was "the symbolic substitute of castration" -- and a feminizing influence on a boy.) Bear in mind that it was Freud (not Kinsey) who said,

    The only unnatural sexual behavior is none at all.

    I haven't finished digesting my Sunday night indigestibles, but I can't wait to read Freud's last book, Moses and Monotheism -- which touches on circumcision, and much more. Written at the end of his life, when the Nazis were closing in on him in Vienna, he grapples with Jewish history. A very controversial book, it has been interpreted as saying things like this:

    The catastrophe which befell on the feminine object of lust reinforced at the collective level the homosexual libido of the Jewish people, as a child who loses his mother redirects his libido towards the father.

    Jewish monotheism may be interpreted, at this level, as the strengthening of homosexual libido after the loss of the heterosexual object.

    Monotheism strengthens the homosexual libido? How widely known is this? (And what are the implications for this blog?)

    And what about the relationship between magic and "cruel military cultures"?:

    What Freud admires most about the effect of the Mosaic faith upon Jews is how it “formed their character for good through the disdaining of magic and mysticism by encouraging them to progress in spirituality and sublimations.” [ii] Why? It “signified subordinating sense perception to an abstract idea; it was a triumph of spirituality over the senses; more precisely an instinctual renunciation accompanied by its psychologically necessary consequences.” [iii] The “athletic virtues,” Freud says, are associated historically with cruel, military cultures. I agree that intellectual regulation of socially developed instincts forms one dimension of ethics. But Freud’s syncretic urge hesitates just when it might have drawn more sustenance from practices endorsed by generous, nonmilitary, nontheistic pagans such as Epicurus and Lucretius. Freud’s depreciation of paganism may have encouraged him, first, to invest too much therapeutic efficacy in the talking cure (even though lying on the couch is a corporeal tactic), second, to draw the line of distinction between therapy and ethico-political life at the wrong place, and, third, to depreciate the profound significance of multimedia arts to political and ethical life.
    Yeah, I can see why such a book might have engendered controversy. Freud was a contrarian to the end -- and a good one. I have no idea whether I'll agree with him, but I am looking forward to the book.

    As usual, I have settled nothing, raised more questions than I've answered, and reviewed a book I haven't even read.

    (But nobody reads these Sunday evening posts....)


    ADDITIONAL TIDBITS: Andrew Ian Dodge seems about as impressed with Dalrymple's arguments as I am.

    And, speaking of cannibalism, here's the learned Noam Chomsky -- chomping on the corpse of Michel Foucault:

    Foucault is an interesting case because I'm sure he honestly wants to undermine power but I think with his writings he reinforced it. The only way to understand Foucault is if you are a graduate student or you are attending a university and have been trained in this particular style of discourse. That's a way of guaranteeing, it might not be his purpose, but that's a way of guaranteeing that intellectuals will have power, prestige and influence. If something can be said simply say it simply, so that the carpenter next door can understand you. Anything that is at all well understood about human affairs is pretty simple. I find Foucault really interesting but I remain skeptical of his mode of expression. I find that I have to decode him, and after I have decoded him maybe I'm missing something. I don't get the significance of what I am left with. I have never effectively understood what he was talking about. I mean, when I try to take the big words he uses and put them into words that I can understand and use, it is difficult for me to accomplish this task It all strikes me as overly convoluted and very abstract. But -what happens when you try to skip down to real cases? The trouble with Foucault and with this certain kind of theory arises when it tries to come down to earth. Really, nobody was able to explain to me the importance of his work...
    Deconstructing the leading deconstructionist?

    Now that's cannibalism!


    UPDATE: The above post was linked by Southern Musings in this week's Bonfire of the Vanities. Go read them all!

    posted by Eric at 09:02 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)




    "Auntie Communism?"

    A very creative blog (which features some very cool graphics) reports the latest twist on an old theme -- the bashing of "homocons" for not conforming to the cultural diktats of the gay cultural Stalinists. This time, Michelangelo Signorile is calling Andrew Sullivan an "Auntie Tom" for daring to write for the "homophobic" Washington Times:

    Last week, NY Press columnist Michelangelo Signorile wrote that Sullivan (and Matt Drudge) were big gay hypocrites for their associations with DC's looney Moonie rag, The Washington Times. Turns out that despite his ultra-faggy outfits, Rev. Moon hates the gays.

    ....[W]e do love the way Rev. Moon put it:
    "If you misuse your love organ, you destroy your life, your nation, your world." "Love organ"! We're totally stealing that.

    Well crush my love organ! Sun Myung Moon hates the homos!

    Therefore, any homo who's published in his paper is an "Auntie Tom"!

    Now, I could see the logic of a charge of hypocrisy were Andrew Sullivan (or any other accused "homocon" or "Auntie Tom") to actually say something hypocritical.

    But here, the hypocrisy is said to be found not in the views or opinions of the writer himself, but rather, hypocrisy by association: the writer is responsible for the views of his publisher.

    If that is the standard, then it would seem to me that any gay writer whose writing is published by Communist or Islamist publishers would also have to be a hypocrite. Because after all, Communist and Islamist countries do not tolerate homosexuality. It's also a pretty high standard in general, because it's tough to get published anywhere, and if writers are to be judged for the thoughts of their publishers, well, where does it end? Should conservative writers refuse to write for liberal journals and vice versa? Am I allowed to write a letter to the editor of the Washington Times?

    Here's what Signorile said about Sullivan (and Matt Drudge):

    It’s sleazy enough that a conservative would work for Moon and ignore his dark and dangerous agenda. But how on earth could a gay writer take a check from a man who can’t wait to see him thrown into an oven? Andrew Sullivan has reveled in his own idiotic claim that after 9/11 certain liberals, because they didn’t agree with George W. Bush’s policies, represented a "fifth column" supporting Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile, here he is, on the payroll of a guy who would like to see the mass extinction of his own people. Sullivan likes to think of himself as a gay rights activist–that’s actually how New York magazine described him recently–but he only seems to activate when the targets are liberals. Bill Clinton gets the Sullivan hatchet treatment for signing the Defense of Marriage Act, while the grossly homophobic Unification Church’s leader gets a weekly column from him in return for a few bucks to keep Sullivan’s increasingly lackluster and predictable web page afloat.
    OK. Is the crime getting into print at the Washington Times? Or does the crime consist of taking money from the Times?

    Apparently not the latter, for here's what Signorile says about Drudge:

    Equally duplicitous is the sexually circumspect Drudge, who draws credibility from the Washington Times’ numerous references and vice versa. He spent the better part of last week trying to frame liberals as belittling the Nazis and the Holocaust. For days he stoked a bogus story pushed by the Republican National Committee and the Wall Street Journal that claimed that the group MoveOn.org had created tv ads comparing Bush to Hitler. When the ads were gone from the group’s web site, the right-wingers claimed they had scored another victory, as when they got cowardly CBS to ban The Reagans.
    Who owns whatever the rag is that Signorile writes for? Suppose that Moon's conglomerate bought the place. Should Signorile quit?

    I don't think anyone abhors Moon's views on homosexuality more than I do. I have condemned them before in this blog. His latest psychotic gibberish is more of the same. But I'd sure as hell let him -- or the WorldNetDaily, or any other website -- print anything I write. Maybe someone would read it and change his mind about killing all the homos.

    I wish to state for the record that Reverend Moon and I go way back. At UC Berkeley in 1974 (possibly '73; the dates are dim) Reverend Moon gave a speech which I attended with a friend. When Moon launched into an attack on immorality and homosexuality (translated for him by his interpreter, Colonel Park Bo Hi), my friend and I felt compelled to put on a demonstration of live guerilla theater by getting as close to the stage as we could, French-kissing (is that Freedom-kissing now?) in front of everyone, and being thrown out by Moon's gray-suited goons. We spent the rest of the evening pulling down his posters, and shrieking obscenities at "Moonies" -- and I think the word was invented that night. (I was young then, OK? In case any of you are wondering, I don't do things like that these days....)

    So you're not going to get one peep from me in defense of Moon. I think the man is a walking loony tune.

    With all of this in mind, let us examine closely the hiring of Andrew Sullivan to write a column for "his" newspaper. There are only a few possibilities:

    1. Moon exercises no editorial control over the Washington Times;
    2. Moon is a complete hypocrite himself, because he promotes the views of someone he wants to burn to death;
    3. Moon does not mean what he says;
    4. Moon is completely nuts, and out of touch with reality.
    How any of the above possibilities make Sullivan or Drudge hypocrites is beyond me.

    I can't but wonder where Signorile has been published, and I feel like doing some research to discover the thoughts of his publishers, but I don't think it's really worth my time. I wonder whether this latest attack isn't motivated by a little professional jealously though. Because, even if Sullivan obeys Signorile's demands and quits writing for the Times, the relentless Signorile is not about to stop there; when Sullivan writes for Salon.com (an online 'zine definitely not owned by Moon), then Signorile attacks Salon -- for the crime of publishing Sullivan!

    [O]ne of the newest incarnations of the left’s media—Salon—has showcased gay columnists such as Camille Paglia, Norah Vincent and Andrew Sullivan, all of whom are vociferously hostile toward the gay rights movement and have championed conservative causes. The online publication has also run columnists such as David Horowitz, who has attacked gays and AIDS activists in bitter, offensive tirades. It’s akin to having three Clarence Thomases and a David Duke writing on racial issues, without having any well-known black liberal columnist—and this is supposed to be the actual liberal media!
    Camille Paglia, Andrew Sullivan, and David Horowitz are now fag-bashers in league with David Duke himself -- and Salon is now a right wing rag! Sullivan is clearly damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't.

    One thing is clear: Signorile's standards are as elastic as his definition of hypocrisy.

    While I don't think such obvious bias is worth taking too seriously, I do have one additional beef with Signorile, and this is as good a place as any to state it.

    While Andrew Sullivan and Matt Drudge stand on their own feet and make it in a hostile, often anti-gay world, Signorile champions and perpetuates victimization, and has the unmitigated gall to condemn guns, gun nuts and even gay self defense. Rejecting Ann Coulter's attempt to link Islam to DC sniper John Muhammad, Signorile blames (who else) the "gun nuts":

    Timothy McVeigh was a screwed-up Gulf War veteran. John Muhammad is a screwed-up Gulf War veteran. Robert Flores Jr., who shot three people and himself at the University of Arizona last week, was a screwed-up Gulf War veteran. And they were all gun nuts who were able to get weapons of destruction pretty damn easily.

    [ANGRY EDITORIAL NOTE: Hey there Signorile, when you talk about gun nuts, you're talking about me. And you're talking about my blogfather! To insiders, "gun nut" may a term of endearment, but the way you use it, it comes close to being hate speech!]

    Oh, but once you bring up the gun issue—as I did a few weeks ago regarding the sniper case—the NRA types start sounding like every crude stereotype they’ve thrown out there about the whining and whinging, politically correct, ACLU-loving left. I received a slew of mail telling me how "ignorant" and "intolerant" I was of the poor, downtrodden "shooting community." (I’m sorry for the insensitivity, really I am. And I’ll make sure to tell that to the families of the snipers’ victims as well.)

    Is he really sorry? Three "gun nuts" commit murders, and he wants to condemn us all? As a member of the NRA and the ACLU, I resent these lifestyle attacks!

    Some hate speech is more equal than others, I suppose....

    I saved the worst for last! Recalling anti-gay abuse he suffered as a child, Signorile condemns his own self defense (he rightly fought back) -- and then makes that into an argument against guns!

    If I'd had access to a gun, if I knew I could get one from my father's top drawer perhaps, I might have shot someone.

    I don't believe I was a coward. I believe I was doing whatever I had to do in desperate moments, when parents and teachers were not there for me, to preserve whatever sanity I had left and to guard against physical and verbal attack.

    Did I do something hurtful and awful? Absolutely -- so did Andy Williams, but with far graver consequences. Calling the actions of Williams or me or any other abused and traumatized kid an act of "cowardice" is not going to solve the current problem, and in fact only inflames it. Speaking out against homophobia, against bullying and against verbal and physical abuse of any kind in schools -- and demanding accountability from school authorities -- will go a lot farther toward stopping this epidemic of violence, as will curbing the availability of guns to young people.

    So, here's a man, ashamed of and condemning his own self defense, additionally calling for the disarming of young homosexuals!

    And he dares to call Andrew Sullivan a hypocrite?

    Let's assume that Sun Myung Moon is in fact the murderous, genocidal maniac Signorile makes him out to be. By writing in his newspaper, Andrew Sullivan at least serves to raise in readers' minds (and maybe in whatever remnants of a conscience Moon and his ilk may have) the possibility that homosexuals are in fact human beings and not the "dung-eating dogs" Moon calls them.

    Then again, maybe not. Moon is probably a hopeless case.

    That is precisely where guns come in. If Moon and his henchmen decide to wage their holy war against homosexuals, armed homosexuals are not going to sit idly by and allow this to happen. Signorile, who would take away my firearms in the face of the anti-gay genocide he complains of, is far more of a threat to me than imagined hypocrites who might actually be helping assuage it.

    If the word "hypocrisy" applies at all, Signorile has by far done more to earn it.


    UPDATE: Julian Sanchez (in an essay about Signorile's comrade Richard Goldstein) speculates that professional jealousy may be motivating Signorile to marginalize independent gay thinkers:

    ....[I]t must be less galling than confessing that, say, Paglia and Jonathan Rauch are just infinitely more original, interesting writers than Richard Goldstein and Michelangelo Signorile. Perhaps, to preserve their egos, the two of them are entitled to that belief. Nobody else should be tempted, however. Goldstein and his thought police have grown accustomed a political climate in which their marginal progressive agenda got a free ride on the need of homosexuals to defend themselves from an irrational and hostile majority. Now, they want the rest of the gay community to stay marginal, and surrender a real opportunity at expanded political influence, in order to keep free riding. In this, Goldstein may be reaching out to the right after all: I'm sure nothing would please Pat Robertson more.
    Whoa there!

    Is Signorile helping the right wing by working to keep gays marginalized?

    "Hypocrisy" may be too mild a word.....


    UPDATE: My blogfather (who was kind enough to link to this post -- THANKS JEFF!), illustrates this week's famed "Weekly Check on the Bias" column with the ultimate gun cell phone -- a modified mini AK-47 which I hope comes in designer colors....

    Jeff has gotten so proficient at PhotoShopping that I was going to ask him about doing a modified political cartoon involving Edvard Munch's "The Scream".....

    But now I am worried about Jeff's remarks about "getting Dowdy...."

    Am I....(gulp)..... "getting Dowdy" too, Jeff?

    Is there a..... cure?


    MORE: While you're at it, read Jeff's original post on the "Attack Queers" (weren't Signorile and Goldstein really projecting when they complained of "gays attacking gays"?) and Andrew Sullivan.

    posted by Eric at 08:39 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (8)



    (My flakiest post ever!)

    Shoveling snow.

    More to come.

    But every flake is different, right?



    Via
    ASCIIARTFARTS

    posted by Eric at 02:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)




    My inner shrink ran over my own brain pan -- at midnight!

    Let's start with psychoanalysis! I'm always in need of that -- especially on Fridays, when, rain or shine, it's always online testing day at Classical Values.

    By the way, I don't know what I would do without Ghost of a flea, because there is a paucity of online tests in the blogosphere these days. And I see a shortage not only of these slightly silly online tests, but of graphics, music, animation -- anything besides straight text. We may even be in a sort of Dark Ages -- and the Flea does more than almost any other blogger to keep culture and color alive in an increasingly colorless blogosphere! In this regard, I am sorrier than ever to see Rachel Lucas leave, because I loved her pictures, and I think it is very important to spice up blogs with things like pictures, videos, recipes, etc.

    So much for half "baked" blog theories!

    Perhaps it is appropriate that this first test promised to tell me which 20th Century Theorist I am.

    The Flea and I are both incarnations of an important psychoanalyst!

    Lacan
    You are Jacques Lacan! Arguably the most important
    psychoanalyst since Freud, you never wrote
    anything down, and the only works of yours are
    transcriptions of your lectures. You are
    notoriously difficult to understand, but at
    least you didn't talk about the penis as much
    as other psychoanalysts. You died in 1981.


    What 20th Century Theorist are you?
    brought to you by Quizilla



    Well, if I am a psychoanalyst, what kind of thinker am I? While the next test did not promise to tell me anything more than when I am, my "when" is apparently deep and dark!

    Midnight
    Midnight - You are a deep thinker, always searching
    for answers and never quite at home. You are
    very contemplative, and enjoy being alone with
    your thoughts.


    When are you?
    brought to you by Quizilla

    (Via ALLANLINGZ.)


    If I am dark, then I must be a villain, right?

    The next test -- "What MST3K Villain are you?" -- brought me right back to the psychoanalysis, because I am a severed head. And female, severed head nostalgia at that!

    Obviously, I am in danger of losing my head -- a head which isn't even mine, and which is kept in a pan!

    You are Jan in the Pan
    What MST3K Villain are you?
    by Krankor.com

    Via Meatriarchy.



    More nostalgia! (Gotta keep losing my head, right?)

    Finally, once again from the Flea, I found one last test -- to determine which video game character I am.

    I am a Scorched Earth Tank:



    What Video Game Character Are You? I am a Scorched Earth Tank.I am a Scorched Earth Tank.


    When I have a mission, it consumes me; I will not be satisfied until the job is done. I have a strong sense of duty, and a strong sense of direction. Changes in the tide don't phase me - I always know which way the wind blows, and I know how to compensate for it. I get on poorly with people like myself. What Video Game Character Are You?


    "I get on poorly with people like myself?"


    (Maybe I should put my brain pan back in the oven....)

    posted by Eric at 11:16 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)



    History versus truth -- the classics denied! AGAIN!

    At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I must complain again about deliberate (in this case, simply outrageous) distortion of history.

    No; "distortion" is too weak a word. My complaint this time involves outright lying -- a big lie on the level of Goebbels and Stalin

    History is supposed to be the story of what happened.

    Facts.

    Just the truth. It should not be relevant to historians what one group or another may feel is the most popular version of a particular story, nor should it matter whose sacred cows are affected.

    With that in mind, I endeavored earlier to ascertain the actual history of the space currently occupied by Jerusalem's al Aksa Mosque.

    There are dozens of versions available on the Internet -- so many that yesterday I found myself wondering whether there are any serious, objective historians who know, simply, what happened, and precisely where. One would think that it would be possible to know, considering the rich archaeological evidence in the area. Direct, physical evidence, of the kind historians call the "primary source" variety. Stuff that speaks for itself.

    Like (once again) Roman coins. Roman sculptures.

    It is so far beyond dispute that Israel, known as Judea, was occupied by the Romans, that the Romans fought several major wars with the Jews, that the Romans killed hundreds of thousands of Jews in these wars (in which as many as 90,000 Romans were killed in one war alone), that the Jews were then disbursed -- that I don't see how any sane person could possibly deny it.

    Yet the Arab word maintains seriously that the Jews were never there! I guess they think that the Romans made up the history of the terrible wars they fought against the Jews. That they forged the coins showing "CAPTIVE JUDEA" -- and invented the sculptures showing the looting of the Temple and the carrying off of Menorahs.

    Why on earth would the Romans make this up? I don't know. Perhaps you'd have to ask, for starters, the Palestinian Authority. Their official history is that the Jews never lived in Israel. Ever!

    The following is a typical Arab claim:

    The Arabic name for Jerusalem is El Kuds, not Jerusalem. Various Palestinian and Arab spokespersons have rejected the fact that the 1st and 2nd Jewish Temples ever existed in Jerusalem. Here is what the Palestinian Authority says about the Western Wall on the official PA website:

    "Al-Boraq Wall: It is part of the exterior facade of the western wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque. 'Al-Boraq,' a creature which carried Mohammad during his ascension to heaven, was tied to this wall. Some Orthodox religious Jews consider it as a holy place for them, and claim that the wall is part of their temple which all historic studies and archaeological excavations have failed to find any proof for such a claim.

    This web site offers an exhaustive look at the history of the site -- particularly of the Roman period, contrasting it with bogus Arab claims:

    [EDITORIAL NOTE: sorry for the long quote -- but the following is as accurate as it is exhasutive, and I must show it here to demonstrate the outrageous Arab falsification of history.]

    Yassir Arafat and the Arabs claimed the Holy Jewish Temple Mount and Jerusalem based upon one extraordinarily huge lie told over and over again. Here their is a brief history of the religious war against the Jewish people, the Jewish State of Israel and her 3000 year old Eternal Capital, Jersalem.

    Would be conquerors invariably issue false claims to provide justification for their march to conquest. The more recent call to "Jihad" against the Jews of Israel was first called in 1947 after the U.N. partition in a "Fatwa" (religious ruling) by the Saudis - supposedly to save the AI-Aksa mosque on the Temple Mount from the Jews. Thus, Yassir Arafat, with the full support of the Arab Nations, later claimed the Jewish Temple Mount as the third holiest site for Islam - including all of Jerusalem. Therefore, as in the past, this claim has its root in a classic religious war - in addition to other spurious reasons offered.

    Arafat resurrected this false political claim in 1967 with the same excuse that Arafat's uncle, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Al-Husseini, used to initiate the riots of Hebron ard Jerusalem in 1929. Tne Grand Muffi FALSELY claimed that the Jews were attacking the Al-Aksa mosque and killing Muslims in his virulent war against the Jews. Then the Muslims began massacring the Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron (67 killed) and other Jewish areas. Husseini later became a confidante of Adolph Hitler, begging him to bring his Jew-killing machine to Jerusalem during WWII.

    Similarly, Arafat has done everything possible to bring the larger Arab nations into the conflict, using the false clails that the Temple Mount and all of Jerusalem belongs only to Islam. Arafat desperately wants and needs a full scale war as a bloody rite of passage for his miscellaneous Palestinians. Arafat may, however, absorbed whatever concessions he has been offered by Barak and delay the big war until a time of his own choosing, (just as Mohammed did in violating the Hudaibiya Treaty in 628 C.E. - see below)

    This myth of Jerusalem as Islam's third holiest city based upon the mythical ascension of Mohammed from Al-Aksa to Heaven has grown exponentially in the recent telling since 1967. When you tell a Big Lie and repeat it often, it achieves credibility and legs of its costa. In Islam, telling a lie to infidels for the sake of colarging you own believers" faith or defeating the infidel is acceptable, even desirable.

    Brief History

    Site of the Temple Mount in the Future Jewish Capital of Jerusalem

    2 Samuel 24:21-25 The choosing of the site came when G-d punished Israel because King David ordered a census of the Jewish peopleafter he defeated of the Philistines in a great battle. The sin was King David"s presumption that the salvation of the people came from their slicer numbers and not the Hand of G-d. A pestilence followed which only ceased when the prophet Gad advised King David to erect an altar on the stone threshing floor on Mt. Moriah that belonged to Araunah, the Jebusite. So King David purchased the site for 600 silver shekels, for which he assessed 50 silver shekels from each tribe. (1 Chronicles 21:25)

    King David built the altar and the plague ceased, The site was on Mount Moriah where Abraham had prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac in obedience to G-d"s Command as this final test of Abraham"s faith. This then was the place where the future Jerusalem was to be built and the site of the First and Second Temples. As a man of war, King David was not allowed to build the Temple, so the task fell to his son King Solomon, who built the First Temple on the Temple Mount. (1)

    Revision of History

    These facts of recorded history have been obliterated by the recent false claims made in the time of radical Islamic Fundamentalism supported by the silence of scholars willing to face a "Fatwa" of assassination as was issued against Salman Rusdie. Moreover, the World Media, with full access to Biblical scholars and historical files, have instead accepted the Great Lie. They carry it forward without question and with a certain perverse enthusiasm, having refused to use the Bible (Torah) as a resource. They also have neglected to read the opinions of such experts as the 13th Century Arab biographer Yakut who noted: "Mecca is holy to Muslims; Jerusalem is holy to the Jews."(2)

    The history of Jerusalem and the site of the Jewish Holy Temple, constructed in 956 B.C.E. (2956 years ago) by King Solomon, son of. King David according to G-d"s specific instructions is fully described with minute detail in the Tomb. The First Temple was later destroyed by the Babylonian conqueror, Nebuchadineizar in 536 B.C.F. (2370 verms ago). This was not the first attempt to destroy the Jewish people but was significant in in goal to eliminate what was the repository of Jewish strength and belief.

    The Second Temple was rebuilt by order of Cyrus, the King of Persia, who also paid for its reconstruction and ordered the return of the Jews exiled to Babylon in 538 B.C.E. The second Temple was completed and consecrated in 51513.C.E, (2,3 &4)

    King Herod, a great builder but a cruel, despotic ruler appointed by the Romans rebuilt and added to the Second Temple for 46 years. After the Jews revolted against Roman rule, the Romans under Titus destroyed and burned die Second Temple beginning on the Ninth of AV (Tisha B"Av), 70 C.E. (1930 years ago). You may recall seeing photos of the carvings on the Arch of Titus in Rome, depicting Titus" triumphal march through Rome, Pedaling the sacred Temple vessels, including the great , Menorah (Candelabra).

    The Romans sent the Jews into exile again for 1,878 years. However, for all that time there was a Jewish presence and those dispersed across the globe prayed daily - "Next Year in Jerusalem! " The City and the Temple have always been central to Jewish thought and identity. (Note! Despite Arafat"s claim that there was no Jewish connection to the Temple, the Romans memorialized their capture of the Jews and their Temple in 70 C.E. by carving it in stone.)

    The streets of Jerusalem and the Holy Jewish Temple were walked upon by Jewish Kings and Prophets long before the 7th century C.E, when a man named Mohammed had a vision that he was the last chosen prophet of G-d, the G-d they called Allah. Mohammed was driven out of Mecca by the Arab community and fled to Medina which had three Jewish tribes. Mohammed offered himself to the Jews as G-d"s (Allah) final Prophet.

    For 19 months Mohammed offered his "quibla" (direction of his prayers) toward Jerusalem as a "confidence-building gesture", until the Jews refused to believe his claims and totally rejected him. Then Mohammed gathered the pagan desert tribes under his visionary image.

    Mohammed used the trick of a temporary truce (permitted in Islam) to make a treaty called the Hudaibiya Treaty with the Jewish Koraish tribe. But, in 628 C.E. at the Khalil" Oasis, Mohammed killed them. Arafat often claims that the Oslo Treaty is similar to the Hudaibiya Treaty which Mohammed violated with impunity when he was militarily stronger. (4)

    Mohammed never again mentioned the word Jerusalem in his compilation of Islam"s holy book, the Koran and directed his "quibla" (prayers) to Mecca. If a Muslim happened to visit or pass through Jerusalem, it was called a "ziyarar" unlike the holy pilgrimage to Mecca which was called by the honorific "Haj". A mandated visit to Mecca allowed the Muslim pilgrim to add Haj to his name.

    For Mohammed, Jerusalem was a despised place of the Jews and had no place in his vision for his Islamic religion. It was as if he could not excise the Jewish essence from holy Jewish City of Jerusalem, although it is said that he believed that the Last Judgement of man would issue from Jerusalem. Mohammed spent his early years among the Jewish tribes particularly in and around Yathrib (Medina). It was, therefore, not unusual for Mohammed to include a pilgrimage to Mecca since the Jewish Torah called for the Jews to make three pilgrimages to Jerusalem each year on Sukkot, Pesach, and Shavuot. There is much in the Koran that finds its source in the Torah (JewishBible).

    Before the days of Mohammed, Christian conquerors had occupied Jerusalem (within the Byzantine Empire). Bringing one"s god into battle demonstrated that both their armies and their gods were superior to those of their victims when they won. So, they usually built their holy places on top their victims" holy places, which they did on the Temple Mount, to absorb the strength of their conquered adversaries and to convert them to their religion. Even under the threat of the sword, the Jews refused to convert and allow their lineage to be absorbed, which would in effect, transfer G- d"s Covenant.

    Mohammed died in 632 C.E. Jerusalem was subsequently captured from the Christians by Khaliph Omar, six years after Mohammed"s death, accompanied by the apostate Yemenite, Jew, Ka"ab al Akhbru (the smile syndrome as today). There was a struggle over who would assume Mohammed"s role as leader of the new religion of Islam which he had envisioned.

    So, another conqueror (the Muslims) had superceded the Christian invaders and their Mosque was proof of their superiority in battle and gods. But, it was much more. It was also to be a mighty symbol in the struggle for leadership of the growing movement of Islam. Since Mecca was already the location of Mohammed"s power with its own priest cult, if a claimant wanted to redirect that power to him self as the new leader of Islam, he would also need an uncontested and new base of religious power. He could not make war on Mecca and expect to be accepted as Mohammed"s rightful heir.

    Jerusalem, despite Mohammed's rejection, was still looked upon in the then Arab world as a powerful symbol where the ancient Jews had placed their faith. The Jews considered Jerusalem the center of the world and the earthly dwelling place of HaShem ... the one G-d. it was not surprising that the Arabs and other nations wanted to own and control this source of power. Approximately 60 years after Mohammed"s death, the Dome of the Rock was built by Khaliph Abd El Malik of Syria in a first effort to turn Muslim prayers toward his edifice. He wanted to demonstrate Islam"s superiority over the Christians and Jews they had driven from Jerusalem. This was primarily for political purposes, not necessarily religious. El Malik failed in his bid to become the replacement for Mohammed and the Muslims continued to direct their "quibla" (direction of prayers) toward Mecca and the revered Kaba"a stone monolith. The El- Aksa, Mosque was built 20 years after the Dome of the Rock or 80 years after Mohammed died. (4 & 5)

    The Church, Saint Mary of Justinian, constructed on the Jewish Temple Mount. later became the foundation for the Dome of the Rock built by Khadiph Abd El Malik over and around the Church in 691-692. Approximately in 711 C.E., Malik"s son Abd Ell Walid, who ruled from 705 to 715 - reconstructed the Christian-Byzantine Church of St. Mary and converted it into a mosque. He left the Christian structure as it was, a typical Byzantine "basilica" structure with a row of Pillars on either side of the rectangular "ship" in the center. All he added was an union-like dome on top of the building to make it look like a mosque. He named it El-Aksa, so it would sound like the one mentioned in the Koran. (5)

    El-Buraq Myth

    Early Islamic scholars, with no particular political agenda, interpreted Mohammed"s dream flight to El-Aksa * (tit. the furthest place) was to Islamic heavenly place where the purest and most holy Courtyard of Allah. That, indeed, would be the "furthest place" or "El Aksa". The revised myth of today names the earthly Al- Aksa Mosque built by Khaliph El Malik on the site of the Jewish Temple as the basis of the Muslim claim to the Temple Mount. This is substantially different than that of the early non-political scholars of Islam Serious Islamic scholars viewed the tale as merely a folk story. The mythical story of Mohammed"s night flight, which evolved from unidentified sources after Mohammed"s death went something like this: (Note! Keep in mind that there was no El-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount until 80 years after Mohammed"s death.)

    "In the time it takes for a drop of water to spill from a tipped over jug, Mohammed flew, in a dream, to El-Aksa (the furthest place). He flew on a winged horse named El-Buraq which had the face and breasts of a woman and the tail of a peacock. El-Buraq landed on the rock upon which it was believed Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac as G-d"s ultimate test of Abraham"s faithfulness. (The Muslims maintain that it was Ishmael, son of the Abraham"s Egyptian concubine Hagar who was to sacrificed.) This giant horse was tethered for a period of time on the Rock or foundation stone of the Holy Jewish Temple, leaving a hoofprint on the Rock, Then Buraq leapt to the 7th Heaven where Mohammed purportedly met all the ancient Jewish prophets (including J...s) and received their blessings as the last Prophet of Allah. Then (in the dream) he returned to Mecca as the last authorized prophet of Allah.(6 Koran Sura 17:1)

    This is the basis of Yassir Arafart"s present claim to the Jewish Temple Mount (and, by extension, all of Jerusalem) as the third holiest place for Islam after Mecca and Medina. He has called his recent terrorism against Israeli Jews, the Aksa "intifada" and returned the Western Wall: the "El-Buraq Wall". The Muslim "Wakf" (caretakers) are presently excavating and destroying all evidence of Jewish artifacts under the Temple Mount, and Arafat has claimed there is nothing in, on or under the Temple Mount to prove its Jewish history The Arabs" massive excavation under the Temple Mount is more than removing the races of the Jew. but is a virtual displacement of the Jewish religion by Arafat for Islam.(7)

    In this blog, I have linked to Roman coins as well as pictures of the Arch of Titus to demonstrate that there are primary Roman sources for what no serious historian could deny.

    Where do these Arabs get off lying like this? Why does no one call them on it? Why do members of the American press (like Charlie Rose, for example) take them seriously?

    I am not about to advocate tearing down the al Aksa Mosque -- because it is part of history. Jewish, Roman, Christian, and Muslim history. But to deny history is especially heinous to me. People who deny the true history of a site they claim as "theirs" in my opinion have lost any moral right to manage it properly.

    In case any readers doubt the veracity of Jewish sources, and don't believe clear evidence on Roman coins, consider the following Wikipedia discussion of Arab claims as "conspiracy theory":

    The Jews never lived in Israel theory

    The Palestinian Authority, and some other Arab governments and universities, teach that Jews never lived in Israel. They teach that all archaeological proof to the contrary is part of an international western anti-Arab conspiracy. In this view, the Bible's claims are deliberate fictions, and the ancient Jews actually came from Yemen, on the Arabian peninsula. This is a mainstream Arab view, taught in many schools across the Middle East.

    This view has garnered support among many Muslims because it is in accord with traditional Muslim beliefs. According to Islam, the leaders of both Judaism and Christianity deliberately altered the true word of God, and thus led all of their believers down a false path. In the Quran, Mohammed charges the Jewish people with "falsehood" (Sura 3:71), distortion (4:46), and of being "corrupters of Scripture." This belief was developed further in medieval Islamic polemics, and is a mainstream part of both Sunii and Shiite Islami today. This is known as the doctrine of tahrifi-lafzi, "the corruption of the text".

    Examples:

    "Jerusalem is not a Jewish city, despite the biblical myth implanted in some minds...There is no tangible evidence of Jewish existence from the so-called 'Temple Mount Era'...The location of the Temple Mount is in question...it might be in Jericho or somewhere else." (Walid M. Awad, Director of Foreign Publications for the PLO's Palestine Ministry of Information, interviewed by the IMRA news agency, Dec.25, 1996.)

    A Palestinian tv show broadcast on PLO Television in June 1997 featured Palestinian Arab historian Jarid al-Kidwa. He claimed that "all the events surrounding Kings Saul, David and Rehoboam occurred in Yemen, and no Hebrew remnants were found in Israel, for a very simple reason--because they were never here." Al-Kidwa said: "Most of the Khazars (a Turkish tribe that converted to Judaism in medieval times) are the Ashkenazic Jews who arrived in Palestine. As Allah is my witness, in my blood flows more of the Children of Israel and the ancient Hebrews than in the blood of Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu."

    According to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz (July 6, 1997), al- Kidwa said: "The stories of the Torah and the Bible did not take place in the Land of Israel--they occurred in the Arabian peninsula, primarily in Yemen. The identity of our father Ibrahim [Abraham] who is mentioned in the Koran is clear. From the Koran's description of him it arises that he lived in the southern Hejaz [Saudi arabia], near Mecca."

    Numerous Palestinian Authority textbooks for their children teach them that Jews and Chrisitans lie about being connected to the land of Israel. Here is one such example: "The Zionists turn[ed] their attention towards Palestine as the national homeland of the Jews, while relying on false historical and religious claims." From Modern Arab History and Contemporary Problems, Part Two, for Tenth Grade p. 50

    When Palestinian Authority school books discuss sites of religious interest, Muslim as well as Christian sites are included but not Jewish. Even the Jews' connection to the remnant of their holiest site, the Western Wall of the Temple, is denied: "The Jews claim that this is one of the places belonging to them and call it "The Western Wall", but this is not so." From Reader and Literary Texts for Eighth Grade #578 p. 103. Their textbooks also claim that Jews have nothing to do with the Temple in Jerusalem: "Jerusalem: I have many Islamic holy places and antiquities. This is al-Aqsa Mosque and this is the Dome of the Rock...To the west of the holy mosque you can see a vast stone wall called 'al-Buraq Wall', [Western Wall of the Temple] to which the angel Gabriel, peace be upon him, tied the beast of the Prophet Muhammad on the night of his journey [to heaven]... As for my Christian holy places - the most famous of them are 'The Church of al-Qiama' [Holy Sepulchre-ed], next to the mosque of 'Umar ibn al Khatab, and the church of 'al-Juthmana' opposite al-Isbat Gate, outside the wall. From Palestinian National Education for Third Grade #529 P. 14.

    The Palestine Ministry of Information issued, on Dec. 10, 1997, the follow statement. They claimed that a century's worth of archaeological excavations in the Old City of "Jerusalem" have found "Umayyad Islamic palaces, Roman runis, Armenian ruins and others, but nothing Jewish." The Ministry then claimed that "there is no tangible evidence of any Jewish traces / remains in the old city of Jeruslaem and its immediate vicinity."

    And here is the Internet Encyclopedia:
    Many Arab schools and universities teach that Jews never lived in the land of Israel, and that all archaeological proof to the contrary is part of an international western anti-Arab conspiracy. In this view, no Jews ever lived in Israel, and the Bible's claims are deliberate fictions, and the ancient Jews actually came from Yemen. While Western scholars and moderate Arabs consider such claims to be conspiracy theories, this view is now wide-spread among some Palestinians, Lebanese and Saudi Arabians.
    It's hard to know what to say. I am, simply, astounded.

    If, as the Arab governments claim, the Romans never fought wars against the Jews because the Jews never existed in Judea -- if the murderous wars were made up -- then how do we know the Romans themselves ever existed? Did the Jews invent them too?

    Does history as we know it no longer exist?


    ADDITIONAL NOTE: My personal opinion (based on hours and hours of studying this stuff) is that the al Aksa Mosque was most likely an early Islamic conversion of the Byzantine Church of St. Mary, itself a conversion of Hadrian's Temple of Jupiter -- which of course the Romans built on the site of the original temple, to deny Jews access to a holy site which had originally been theirs. Such a place is rich in history and archaeology -- Jewish, Pagan, Christian, Muslim.

    I know it sounds naive -- but I think history should be respected.

    In case my readers haven't noticed, I am more than a little sensitive about basic historical facts (particularly involving the Romans) being questioned -- as I have devoted a great deal of time to the Romans in this blog.

    You can read my post about the Roman war with Judea here.

    posted by Eric at 02:37 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)




    Huge dysfunctional family

    NOTE: I should probably stress something that occasional or first time readers might miss. Despite my regular differences with Biblical literalists of the Christian variety, I should make it clear that Koranic literalists are far worse -- and far more dangerous.

    With the exception of an occasional murder of an abortion doctor (and an occasional crazy antigay attack) modern fundamentalist Christians in the United States do not kill people for the crime of disagreeing with them. Maybe some of them would if they had unlimited power, but they are nowhere near getting such power, and only a paranoid nut would maintain that they are.

    So, my various disagreements with fundamentalist Christian (as well as my discussions of problems I see rooted in the early history of the Christian church), while a primary focus of this blog, should never be seen as minimizing in any way the far more major threat from fundamentalist Islam.

    And, amazingly, the worst of the players are still seen as our allies!

    Members of the wildly dysfunctional Saudi royal family are principal bankrollers of al Qaida, and live in a state of in serious denial:

    The Saudi royal family's once limitless capacity for self-delusion is now running on empty. The most abrupt wake-up call came in recent weeks with the discovery of al Qaeda training camps in the desert near several major Saudi cities. Camouflaged as seminaries, the pseudo-clerics doubled in brass as instructors for training in both weapons and insurgency attacks.

    ....

    Well concealed from prying Western eyes, the ruling family is in the throes of its worst crisis in its 71 years.

    The founder of the dynasty, Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, married 235 women and kept 660 concubines. Their pictures and particulars were enclosed in a huge gold embossed album for occasional perusal during daylong Cabinet meetings that the king had a habit of interrupting. This reporter met with the founder in 1952(he died in 53) and courtiers were proud to brag about the monarch's gargantuan sexual appetites, proof of great strength. The family is 24,000-strong today (including girls and wives).

    Crown Prince Abdullah, pending the passing of King Fahd, disabled by a stroke in 1995, is acting boss. A reformist by instinct of survival, Abdullah is still limited in his ability to bring about fundamental change. He has to contend with a number of royal factions, each with its own agenda that is not necessarily reformist.

    Abdullah is first deputy prime minister and commander of the National Guard, which is both Praetorian Guard and internal security force. Prince Sultan, the defense minister, and second in line for the throne, is second deputy prime minister and inspector general. He controls the armed forces and is also Minister of Aviation and chairman of Saudia, the national airline. There are a number of other powerful constituencies, such as Prince Nayef, the interior minister, who cannot be pushed around by Abdullah. Nayef, who said last year Israel's Mossad engineered the September 11 attacks on America, is the closest to the Wahhabi clergy, oversees the religious police and the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

    On top of that, from BLOG IRAN I received this report, adding yet more evidence that al Qaida is a joint Saudi-Iranian venture (denied by those who know, of course....):

    WASHINGTON - (KRT) - On what had been the eve of his widely expected acquittal, the trial of the second person charged by German authorities as an accomplice of the Sept. 11 hijackers was thrown into turmoil Wednesday after prosecutors disclosed the existence of a surprise witness purporting to link Iran to the hijackings.

    The mysterious witness, who goes by the name Hamid Reza Zakeri and claims to have been a longtime member of the Iranian intelligence service, is said to have told German investigators that the Sept. 11 plot represented what one termed a "joint venture" between the terrorist group al-Qaida and the Iranian government.

    Nothing new. In 1999, Yossef Bodansky documented "the new era of cooperation" between Tehran (via HizbAllah) and the "Sunni terrorist elite" -- and disclosed the workings of the Committee of Three.

    For years I have been reading about the links between al Qaida and Hezbollah (which equals Saudi-Iranian). (I read Bodansky's Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America in 1999.)

    But why does all of this remain largely a mystery to the American public?

    I mean, I can see that the Saudis are a huge dysfunctional family.

    But do we have to be a part of it?

    We certainly seem to be enablers at this point, and I don't think it's unreasonable to ask why it is that powerful special interests in the United States are allowed to continue to live in denial.

    Might embarrassment have something to do with it?

    If the Iranians indeed trained Al Qaeda, this would certainly explain why Al Qaeda seems to have such a keen understanding of the U.S. intelligence system. When the Iranians took over our Embassy in Teheran, in November 1979, they seized several rooms of top secret CIA documents. This seems to have been the only occasion in history when a CIA station lost its entire stock of inteligence to the enemy; and the insight these documents provided on U.S. sources and methods has given the Iranians a distinct operational advantage against us. Among other things, as press acounts have disclosed, the Iranians were able to detect many (perhaps even all) CIA agents in Iran between 1987 and 1992, and to turn these agents into disinformants. (These double agents steered our policy toward Iran, by continually alleging that the regime was on the verge of "moderation," and needed only our foreign trade, to strengthen the hands of the "moderates.")

    The connection between Hezbollah (HizbAllah) and al Qaida is overwhelming. This report by Louis Freeh is as good a starting point as any:

    Working in close cooperation with the White House, State Department, CIA and Department of Defense, I made a series of trips to Saudi Arabia beginning in 1996. FBI agents opened an office in Riyadh and aligned themselves closely with the Mabaheth, the kingdom's antiterrorist police. Over the course of our investigation the evidence became clear that while the attack was staged by Saudi Hezbollah members, the entire operation was planned, funded and coordinated by Iran's security services, the IRGC and MOIS, acting on orders from the highest levels of the regime in Tehran.

    ....

    I quickly dispatched the FBI case agents back to Saudi Arabia, where they interviewed, one-on-one, six of the Hezbollah members who actually carried out the attack. All of them directly implicated the IRGC, MOIS and senior Iranian government officials in the planning and execution of this attack. Armed with this evidence, the FBI recommended a criminal indictment that would identify Iran as the sponsor of the Khobar bombing. Finding a problem for every solution, the Clinton administration refused to support a prosecution.

    The prosecution and criminal indictment for these murders had to wait for a new administration. In February 2001, working with exactly the same evidence but with a talented new prosecutor, James B. Comey Jr. (now U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York), Attorney General John Ashcroft's personal intervention, and White House support, the case was presented to a grand jury. On June 21, 2001, only four days before some of the terrorist charges would have become barred by the five-year statute of limitations, the grand jury indicted 13 Hezbollah terrorists for the Khobar attack and identified Iran as the sponsor.


    Yesterday [May 19] the White House reiterated Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's recent statement that al Qaeda leaders are now conducting their operations from Iran. The time to bring that pressure to bear is right now, with Ambassador Bremer and our armed forces bringing democracy and justice to the Iraqi people next door. This time the United States should not just send Tehran a letter. American justice for our 19 Khobar heroes is long overdue.

    Here's more in the National Review:

    Five years after the Khobar Towers killings, 13 Saudis and a Lebanese were indicted by a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia for the murders. The Saudis were members of the so-called "Saudi Hezbollah" terrorist group — supported by Iran and operated by Imad Mugniyah, one of the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists. The indictments prompted Prince Sultan, Saudi deputy prime minister, to say that, "…the Americans have no right to take any (legal) steps that come under Saudi jurisdiction," and that "The (U.S.) indictments should be passed to the kingdom for further investigation." Now, seven years later, we have another bombing in Saudi Arabia. Again, FBI agents are on the way to investigate, and again they will meet the same Saudi stonewall.
    Trying to follow up these stories and coming up dry is enough to make me wonder if someone is managing to censor the damned Internet!

    According to Avi Davis, the United States has a history of appeasing Hezbollah:

    October 23, 1983 stands as America's first post-World War Two day of infamy. That was the morning Hezbollah guerillas ended the lives of 241 Marines and over 70 French soldiers at the Beirut barracks of the multi-national peace-keeping forces in Beirut. The event claims its mark on history on two counts. It was the first time a Muslim extremist group had caused mass casualties against a U. S. target. It was also the first time since the Second World War that a U.S. military force had failed to seek retribution for a mass attack against American servicemen. Acting under a cautious warning from Caspar Weinberg, Ronald Reagans' Secretary of Defense, the Administration rejected retaliation against Hezbollah so as not to threaten a shaky relationship with Saudi Arabia. Instead, American forces were quickly recalled from Lebanon.
    Finally, here's a web site run by Ryan Mauro which (while I can't vouch for it) appears to have done a pretty good job of documenting the Iranian connection to al Qaida.

    My only, very tired, very lame question is: Why?

    I know that's a rhetorical question, but I'll spell the answer anyway, because the US government apparently can't:

    S-A-U-D-I

    What is it going to take to make our own government face the simple reality that enabling dysfunctional, terror-supporting states does not work?

    UPDATE: Noting our strange "alliance", Michael Demmons has more on the Saudis, and concludes wryly,

    I thought America and the Jews were the root of every evil and catastrophe - but what do I know?

    UPDATE: David Bernstein shares a sensitive and thoughtful email pointing out the staunch support for Israel from the religious right. The email is largely correct, of course, and this highlights another HUGE distinction between fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam.

    Unfortunately, such staunch support for Israel is not shared by all of those who are considered to be on the religious right -- assuming, of course, that this guy is to be considered on the "religious right."

    As Bernstein concludes, "the South has caught up with the rest of the country."

    (But then, Pat Buchanan is not from the South.)

    UPDATE: Via Glenn Reynolds, I found this story, which supplies more evidence of Saudi perfidy in allowing jihadist infiltration into Iraq:

    Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Saudis have since sneaked across the border into Iraq to join the jihad against US-led occupation forces.

    A number have been arrested by the Iraqi police, who describe them as 'Arab Wahhabis', in a pejorative reference to Saudi Arabia's austere, jihad-oriented brand of Islam.

    Other Saudis have been implicated in suicide attacks in Iraq, including one that targeted the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.

    Only four people have so far been caught before they managed to get into Iraq, according to official Saudi government statements, leading many to wonder whether the border guards in al-Jouf are turning a blind eye.

    I am sure they're delighted to let them go. It's a win-win for the royal family, because Saudis angry enough to cross the border to kill Americans are just the type who'd cause trouble at home.

    Nonetheless, Saudi Prince Nayef (he's the guy who claimed "the Jews" were behind 9-11), denied that this is happening:

    "These allegations are absolutely baseless and we have no information about any Saudi crossing from our borders into Iraq," Prince Nayef said in an interview published on Saturday.

    "We will never allow this to happen and would not be lax with any Saudi who tries to interfere in Iraq's affairs."

    (The "border" between Iraq and Saudi Arabia is 475 miles long -- visible mainly as a line on maps.)

    What is Washington's response to all this? According to the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, absolutely none:

    Despite evidence that some of the most dangerous and suicidal Arab terrorists come in from Saudi Arabia, Washington still refuses to publicly discuss the role of Saudis in the Iraqi insurgency or refer to Saudi Arabia in the same tone and wording used in the case of Iran and Syria. There has been no demand from the Saudis to beef up their military presence along the Iraqi border. Nor there has been any special effort by the Saudi government, which claims to be a close ally to the U.S, to block the surge of jihadists to Iraq. Instead, the Saudis, through their spokesman in Washington, Adel Al-Jubeir, were quick to pass the blame to the U.S., announcing that if extremists are getting across the border, it is the responsibility of U.S. forces to stop them.
    Is patrolling the Saudi border now our responsibility? (I thought we had our hands full with Mexico!)

    posted by Eric at 09:57 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)




    Punditry in love with trial lawyer?

    Who are these pundits who all love Edwards now?

    I mean, I can see why they're tired of Howard Dean. As Mark Steyn put it:

    Mr. Dean, who got a bad-back deferment from Vietnam and then went skiing, can't match Mr. McCain's resume and doesn't try. When you go to a Dean angerthon, it's all negative: anti-Bush, antiwar, anti-tax cuts. And, in the end, when you've sated your angry base, the non-deranged members of the electorate generally want something positive, or at any rate a little less snarly. There's a world of difference between Bill Clinton saying he feels your pain and Mr. Dean saying he feels your rage.
    John Edwards, by contrast, is so nice that he is a breath of fresh air.

    But will Edwards' ethos of niceness survive the negative popular stereotypes about trial lawyers?

    This will give an idea of what his enemies are saying:

    Does anyone believe that “President” John Edwards would sign any tort reform legislation trying to rein in rampant abuses of our legal system? Of course not. As a distinguished (meaning rich) former trial lawyer, he understands much better than the rest of us that shopping for aggrieved clients to sue deep pocketed pigeons for phantasmagorical verdicts must be exactly what the Founding Fathers intended.

    Those lawsuits are estimated to cost every man, woman and child in this country $650 a year, but in the world of John Edwards and his cronies at the trough, it is infinitely better for us to give that money to trial lawyers than spend it on SUVs, which may roll over on us, or Big Macs, which may make us fat.

    Senator Edwards’ campaign has said it will return the entire $10,000 contributed by employees of Turner & Associates PA. What the hell, $7,390,000 is still the largest take among presidential candidates. An Edwards spokesperson also said the “campaign has no plans to examine the legality of other contributions,” but would surely act “if presented with information about that.”

    That’s okay, because The New York Times is reporting that the “Justice Department’s public integrity section has opened a criminal investigation” into the donations made to Edwards by employees of the Turner law firm. Somehow, we have the feeling, and it’s just a feeling, that this investigation will be more vigorously pursued than some of recent memory.

    Cynics might venture that all that trial lawyer money for Edwards’ presidential bid may represent the first time their deep pockets get clipped. Polls in North Carolina steadily show Edwards losing his own state by a landslide in a head-to-head match with President Bush, should the president decide to run for re-election.

    To be fair to Edwards, (at least according to Washington Monthly), by no means does the man conform to the stereotype of the greedy, ambulance-chasing trial lawyer; he's honest, hard-working, always prepared, and never took the sleazy cases which receive the negative media attention:

    Opposing such elemental reforms illustrates the bunker mentality that fuels low public opinion of trial lawyers. The question is whether Edwards will succumb to such thinking. If he does, he'll fall into the trap the White House is setting for him. Throughout his career, Edwards has insulated himself from the worst practices of the legal profession through his own impeccable conduct as an attorney. But Republicans, if they're smart, will try to goad Edwards into defending the worst practices of his former colleagues. If they succeed, they may discover Edwards' Achilles heel: As fine a lawyer as he is, Edwards is captive to the romantic ideals of justice he absorbed as a young man, his own experience upholding them, and the paranoid self-righteousness most trial lawyers develop. In multiple interviews, pressed about the problems with lawyers other than himself, and whether he'd support any measures to discourage frivolous lawsuits, he dodged the questions by insisting, again and again, that he hadn't engaged in such behavior. His resistance to examining problems in the legal profession was palpable. Finally, exasperatedly, he offered a noncommittal nod toward reform: "I can tell you in general that if there are proposals that would deal with so-called frivolous lawsuits, without taking away the rights of ordinary people, then that's certainly something that I could support."

    The problem is that regardless of Edwards' own sterling performance as a trial lawyer, popular stereotypes still matter to the voters. This is from PBS News Hour's biography:

    While Edwards' legal career proved very profitable, enabling him to self-finance much of his campaign, Republicans have seen it as a liability. As the Bush administration moved forward on tort reform in 2001, it used the opportunity to try to eliminate Edwards as a presidential contender. "America won't elect John Edwards president for the same reason we've never elected a used car salesman president," declared GOP pollster Frank Luntz. "America hates trial lawyers."
    If the 2004 election becomes a plebiscite on trial lawyers, that might help George W. Bush.

    Here's the Cato Institute on Edwards:

    Edwards became rich as a trial lawyer and gets most of his campaign funds from his fellow plaintiffs of the bar. He has gotten about 60 percent of his funding for the presidential campaign from other lawyers. There's nothing illegal or immoral about that. Lawyers also have a right to participate in politics.

    Having trial lawyers for friends and supporters, however, contravenes the image Edwards hopes to cultivate as an outsider who will stand up to the special interests in D.C. Fairly or not, trial lawyers seem to have found their own presidential candidate in John Edwards.

    Edwards will say trial lawyers fight for the little guy against big corporations who have done them wrong. His opponents will surely point out that two thirds of Edwards' money comes from donors giving the legal maximum of $2,000. That may make his populist rhetoric sound hollow.

    We should not be concerned that John Edwards' campaign broke some campaign finance rules. We should wonder why he has not attracted broad support from Democratic donors. Americans hope to elect a president who seeks, to the best of his ability, the good of the nation as a whole. For now, John Edwards seems more of a lobbyist than a leader.

    These days, I think Edwards is more than a lobbyist. He's shown himself to have genuinely refreshing leadership qualities. His niceness stands in sharp contrast to Dean's combativeness.

    Plus, the man is attractive (an observation I would not make about most candidates). While the latter point ought to be irrelevant, the Iowa polls show that he has a larger gender gap than any other candidate -- with 29% of women supporting him (as opposed to only 23% men).

    Nice and cute!

    But can it beat Bush?

    UPDATE: Dick Morris weighs in on Edwards, and thinks maybe his "captivating manner" can beat Bush:

    While his trial-lawyer campaign contributions will likely rise up to bite him as the race progresses, he is a canny politician with a captivating manner and a trial lawyer's sense of how to appeal to the voters. If he wins, Bush is in for a fight. (Via InstaPundit.)

    posted by Eric at 01:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)



    Designer genes for God and gays?

    NOTE: In case anyone has noticed, I haven't had time for blogging in the past few days. I don't know what I am going to do about it, but what follows has been languishing....

    In a fascinating post last month, Randall Parker discussed scientific data showing a possible connection between "spirituality" and serotonin receptors in the brain:

    Once it becomes possible to control what genetic variations people pass on to their offspring and once genetic variations are discovered that alter personality then at that point the average personality types born to people of different regions, countries, occupations, economic classes, and religious beliefs will diverge. People will make decisions to make their children more like what they want ideal children to be. Imagine religious believers choosing to make their children have personalities that are highly spiritual while at the same time scientists and engineers choose to have children who are highly rational and skeptical. This could lead to genetic religious wars.

    If people in some regions of the world decide to make their children more spiritual and other regions make their children more rational and skeptical then one can imagine wars being fought as a result of conflicts of values that flow from fundamental differences in brain wiring. One can also imagine wars fought to stop the people or governments of opposing countries from creating offspring that are either seen as a security threat (e.g. a highly willing deeply spiritual suicide martyr personality type) or as a blasphemy against god.

    Religious "freedom" may become an anachronism if the statisticians have their way. I would like to know exactly how strong the correlation is.

    I tend to distrust statistical correlations. There are always too many exceptions. I still haven't gotten over that study which showed statistical correlations between homosexuality and eye blinking. (I'd be willing to bet that men who masturbate blink at a different rate than men who don't -- and that there are additional physical as well as emotional differences!)

    Purportedly, the study showed that serotinin "binding potential" (an "index
    for the density of available 5-HT1A receptors")

    correlated inversely with scores for self-transcendence, a personality trait covering religious behavior and attitudes

    Self transcendance?

    Here is the "scientific" definition:

    Character

    Self-Transcendence quantifies the extent to which individuals conceive themselves as integral parts of the universe as a whole. Self-transcendent individuals are spiritual, unpretentious, humble, and fulfilled. These traits are adaptively advantageous when people are confronted with suffering, illness, or death, which is inevitable with advancing age. They are disadvantageous in most modern societies where idealism, modesty, and meditative search for meaning might interfere with the acquisition of wealth and power. People who are low in Self-Transcendence are described as practical, self-conscious, materialistic, and controlling. Such individuals are expected to be well adapted in most Western societies because of their rational objectivity and materialistic success. However, they consistently have difficulty accepting suffering, loss of control, personal and material losses, and death, which lead to adjustment problems particularly with advancing age.

    This is scientific? This is supposed to be measurable on tests?

    The authors of the religion-and-serotonin study seem to associate it with religion, but I would associate it with much more. But here is how the study authors describe it:

    The spiritual acceptance scale measures a person's apprehension of phenomena that cannot be explained by objective demonstration. Subjects with high scores tend to endorse extrasensory perception and ideation, whether named deities or a commonly unifying force. Low scorers, by contrast, tend to favor a reductionistic and empirical worldview.
    Really? What happened to the "meditative search for meaning"? Instead, we get a bunch of fruitcakes looking for ESP and "unifying forces."

    And how about the "practical, self-conscious, materialistic, and controlling" people who "consistently have difficulty accepting suffering, loss of control, personal and material losses, and death, which lead to adjustment problems"? Now, in the serotonin study they have been transformed into people who favor "a reductionistic and empirical worldview."

    Like the test authors, perhaps?

    Sorry folks, but this stuff ain't science to me. It strikes me as highly judgmental.

    And, while I don't mean to defend spiritual people, I would wonder how they could even begin to define that. Why wouldn't a believer in an imaginary Communist Utopia be considered "spiritual" for having transcended ordinary mortal feelings?

    The ability to transcend the self is at the core of Utopian thinking. Subordination oneself to the state (and forgetting about oneself in the process) has led to enormous self-sacrifice, as well as to sacrifice of others.

    QUERY: Might not "the Good" itself involve self transcendence?

    (See my previous post on Communism and Christianity: "We are killing to build a world in which no one will ever kill. We accept criminality for ourselves in order that the earth may at last be full of innocent people")

    It occurs to me that "self-transcendence" is by no means synonymous with religious belief. Most of the religious people I know do not speak in terms of self-transcendance, out of body experiences, talking with God, or anything like that. People who've had LSD trips (and some of the Ecstacy crowd) sure. But religion is more a matter of belief than transcending the self. It's a bit like the old saying, "If you talk to God, you're religious. If God talks to you, you're crazy." I submit that very few of those who call themselves "religious" hear God talking to them, or leave their bodies.

    I am deeply suspicious of the assumptions underlying the search for biological differences in the brain as an explanation of non-conforming thoughts, and I think it is entirely possible that these differences might beg the question as to whether they were caused by, and not a cause of, the self-transcendence under observation.

    If I may illustrate by personal experience, I have noticed certain common patterns in the behavior of bad drivers. For example, I have seen that old men who wear hats often tend to drive much too slowly, and in the middle of the road. Might the wearing of hats have something to do with the behavior? Or does the bad driving cause the wearing of hats? Similarly, I have also noticed that drivers whose back window ledges are cluttered with stuffed animals are usually very unpredictable in their habits -- and should be given wide berth. Again, did the stuffed animals cause the bad driving? Might there be differences in the brain which account for the bad driving? Are studies needed?

    This is not a new idea, of course. Brain receptor chemical changes have been noted in relation to the "runners high", the psychedelic drug high (receptors up!); and, of course, with the dream/religious/drug state. Are they all -- one way or another -- just naturally "turned on, tuned in, and dropped out"? Might daydreamers somehow be different too?

    Wow. And how about PMS? (Or were these possibly religious PMS sufferers?)

    Will science reach what Joseph Hertzlinger calls a "consensus"?

    Mr. Hertzlinger also comments on Randall Parker's religion and serotonin post as follows:

    "There are different ways of being spiritual. I suspect adherents of most traditional religions will be wary of the sort of spirituality that causes one to join the Cult-of-the-Month Club."
    I don't know -- but I am suspicious of the endless search for scientific explanations of behaviors and people who are judged "different."

    This, of course, begs the question, WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY? Looking for designer genes for something so ill-defined strikes me as about on the level of the search for the Holy Grail of Designer Gay Genes.

    But such things are certainly considered fair game for politicians.

    And recent remarks by Howard Dean begged the question of whether there might be "designer genes" for both God and gays!

    Let's start with Dean's remark (that homosexuals were born that way):

    The overwhelming evidence is that there is very significant, substantial genetic component to it. From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people.

    Naturally, this created quite a stir among religious Christian bloggers:

    I will make a bold, inflammatory statement: Any Christian who thinks it is vital to affirm that homosexuals are not born that way is severely deficient in his or her understanding of a vital Christian doctrine: Original Sin.

    Question for those who argue that homosexuals are never born that way: Do you presume they were born innocent? Do you know what original sin means? Do you know in paedobaptism what the water signifies?

    Because of original sin, we all are natural born sinners. And each of us is responsible for the consequences of his own sins, in spite of the fact that we are predisposed to commit them. Tough rules, but this is the only game in town. Of course, the gospel is the good news that shows the way out of the pit into which we enter the world.

    The scientific question is really just a secondary-cause issue. God uses gravity to move the planets around. No doubt He could use our genes to encode original sin.

    Christians who argue, in the face of evidence, that no homosexual is born that way display exactly the same ignorance regarding this basic doctrine of the faith (original sin) as does Dr. Dean.

    God, being just, would not punish homosexuals for being born that way.

    Yes he would. And He would also punish adulterers, coveters, liars, thieves, idolaters—in fact everyone on the planet for being born a sinner. There is only one way out: a saving faith in Jesus Christ. (Via Josh Claybourn.)

    For similar views, see this blog.

    For what it's worth, I don't subscribe to the genetic theory per se. But even if it could be shown that every homosexual was "born that way" it would make no difference at all to matters of religious doctrine. This argument is a waste of time.

    It comes down to whether or not people think a behavior is sinful. If that behavior is judged sinful by the human beings who claim to speak for God, then no amount of scientific evidence is relevant.

    Let's move to something a little less sexually inflammatory; something more people can relate to. How about masturbation? Let us assume that a gene is found which creates a propensity for men (and women, for that matter) to masturbate. No one makes anyone masturbate, but let's face it; without a sex partner, most normal men will eventually yield to the temptation and BINGO! There goes their wad.

    Let us further assume that masturbation is a sin. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that it is a sin. I don't know what the Bible says, but I think I recall something about spilling one's seed on a rock. Onanism or something like that. This would mean that God created the masturbatory gene just to tempt everyone into sin. You might say that this makes God an asshole, and then you might question the infinite wisdom of those who claim they know what's in God's mind. But the gene would change nothing.

    Would the evidence that there is a gene for religion (or spirituality) make any difference? Might God have deliberately created people who are programmed from birth to be True Believers? Why not? It makes things easier, doesn't it? I mean "predestination" and all that stuff. To establish the right "kingdom" here on earth, all we need to do is manage the genes so that only the "elect" are born!

    At last, science and religion merge!

    What a wonderful utopia!

    The problem is that I believe in free will, and I am not buying the gene stuff. Not even if they find the proper "statistical correlations."

    Of course, I lied about masturbation being less inflammatory than homosexuality....

    Yes, dear friends, yes! There is solid evidence that masturbation causes homosexuality. Almost 100% of homosexuals started with masturbation. I think if we can isolate the gene for that, we might be able to make some progress....

    Might there be some correlation with tight genes?


    NOTE: The above essay (along with many excellent posts on a variety of subjects) is also posted at BlogCritics.org.

    posted by Eric at 09:13 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (2)




    Bringing the war home?

    Wesley Clark and John Kerry seem to be at odds over their respective war records. Kerry proudly cites his Vietnam combat background, while Clark claims Kerry's record can't come close to his:

    [N]obody in this race has got the kind of background I've got."

    "It's one thing to be a hero as a junior officer. He's done that, I respect that," Clark said. "But I've got the military experience at the top as well as at the bottom." (Via Drudge.)

    I wonder whether the Clark campaign has seen this Newsmax.com piece on Kerry's "war" record (an excerpt):
  • Those evil American soldiers: Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 23, 1971, Kerry claimed that U.S. soldiers had “raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam.”
  • ‘We are not the best’: In his testimony, Kerry claimed there was no communist threat and said: “In 1970 at West Point Vice President Agnew said ‘some glamorize the criminal misfits of society while our best men die in Asian rice paddies to preserve the freedom which most of those misfits abuse,’ and this was used as a rallying point for our effort in Vietnam. But for us, as boys in Asia whom the country was supposed to support, his statement is a terrible distortion from which we can only draw a very deep sense of revulsion, and hence the anger of some of the men who are here in Washington today. It is a distortion because we in no way consider ourselves the best men of this country ….”
  • U.S. Veteran Dispatch noted in 1996: “Kerry's testimony, it should be noted, occurred while some of his fellow Vietnam veterans were known by the world to be enduring terrible suffering as prisoners of war in North Vietnamese prisons. Kerry was a supporter of the ‘People's Peace Treaty,’" a supposed ‘people's’ declaration to end the war, reportedly drawn up in communist East Germany. It included nine points, all of which were taken from Viet Cong peace proposals at the Paris peace talks as conditions for ending the war.”

  • Throw as I say, not as I do: On that same day he led members of VVAW in a protest during which they threw their medals and ribbons over a fence in front of the U.S. Capitol.

    Kerry later admitted the medals he threw were not his. To this day they hang on the wall of his office.

  • Now, that's Newsmax, and I haven't verified it. But if it's half true, I am not sure that Kerry will be able to keep the focus on his war record alone.

    Hmmmm......

    I wonder whether Kerry plans to continue using the "draft dodger" smear; he's already tried it with Dean..... Might it backfire against Bush?


    "INITIAL" AFTERTHOUGHT: Are the initials on this hat of any significance?

    UPDATE: Quite dismissively, I ran the "initial" idea past a good friend, observing that surely, Americans aren't so dumb as to be persuaded to vote for a candidate because of his initials?

    "OH YES THEY ARE!" was the immediate answer.

    Were Barnum and Mencken right?

    posted by Eric at 01:28 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)




    Michael Moore endorses Republican!

    Things are not looking good for Wesley Clark. First, there was his miserably poor showing in the Des Moines Register poll (via InstaPundit.)

    But now, Michael Moore has endorsed the guy. (via camedwards.com)

    Stunning death blow?

    I don't know how he'll overcome this one.

    But one lingering question: what the hell is Michael Moore doing supporting a Republican? (from Jack O'Toole, via InstaPundit.)


    UPDATE: George McGovern has also endorsed General Clark.

    However, in New Hampshire, Howard Dean is on the skids, while Clark and Kerry are vying for the top.

    (My money is still on Clark, because the anti-war general theme still seems like the best triangulation strategy.)


    UPDATE: Well, Dean seems to have flopped! Edwards now exists as a candidate. (And I had thought he was just a pretty boy type -- appealing mainly to women.....)

    None of this means that I would even consider voting for any of these people, of course. Were I Karl Rove, I would be more comfortable with Kerry than Clark -- but I'm not Rove, and who the hell cares what I think about these things?

    All things considered, I'd rather write about the Ostrogoths!

    A VERY SMALL POINT: Notwithstanding David Broder's and Tim Russert's concerns, size did not turn out to be much of a factor in Iowa.... (Via InstaPundit.)


    Who is Gephardt going to endorse, anyway?

    ONE LAST OBSERVATION: I have lived in Iowa, and my father was a Minnesotan, so I know a little about attitudes there. Perhaps it is right that Iowa is the first state in the primaries, because primary elections are about opportunism, yet opportunism doesn't go over well in the Midwest. Thus, the most obvious opportunists are spotted early -- and nailed. I winced when I saw Dean's church stunt with Jimmy Carter, for I knew it would play poorly in Iowa. Remember the Wellstone funeral backlash? Same deal.

    Politics! It is the essence of opportunism -- yet to succeed in politics one must be as skilled at hiding the opportunism as at exploiting it! What could be more opportunistic than that?

    posted by Eric at 06:47 PM | TrackBacks (0)




    Caving to fundamentalists?

    This is worrisome news:

    A power struggle has begun in Iraq, as could have been predicted—indeed was predicted. Sistani is becoming more vocal and political because he faces a challenge to his leadership from the more activist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. "Al-Sadr does not have Sistani's reputation or training as a scholar and thus presents himself as a populist leader who will look after Shia political interests," says Nakash. It's turning into a contest to see who can stand up to the Americans more vociferously and appeal to Shiite fears. The Iraqi Shiites are deeply suspicious that the United States will betray them, as it did in 1992 after the gulf war, or that it will foist favored exiles like Ahmad Chalabi upon them. Sistani recently told Iraq's tribal leaders that they should take power, not "those who came from abroad."

    The tragedy is that while Sistani's fears are understandable, Washington's phased transition makes great sense. It allows for time to build institutions, form political parties and reform the agencies of government. An immediate transfer will ensure that the political contest will overwhelm all this institutional reform. But Washington lacks the basic tool it needs to negotiate with the locals: legitimacy. Belatedly it now recognizes that the United Nations can arbitrate political problems without being accused of being a colonizer.

    American policymakers made two grave mistakes after the war. The first was to occupy the country with too few troops, creating a security vacuum. This image of weakness was reinforced when Washington caved in to Sistani's objections last June, junked its original transition plan and sped things up to coincide with the American elections. The second mistake was to dismiss from the start the need for allies and international institutions. As a result, Washington is now governing Iraq with neither power nor legitimacy.

    Is the fix in for a hurried US pullout, facilitated by hasty transfer of power to apparently moderate Islamic mullahs? (That has an oxymoronic ring, doesn't it?) Superficially at least, the Iranian born (he looks Iranian too) Sistani appears to be a moderate. But he is in his seventies, and there has been speculation that once an Islamic government is established, the hard-core elements (better organized and more radical) will take over.

    What about the personality of Iraq's Grand Ayatollah?

    Sistani, a slight man with a long white beard and thick black eyebrows who speaks Arabic with a Persian accent, is known as a marja al-taqlid, a title held by a handful of the most senior ayatollahs. To his followers, he has the right to interpret Islamic law in everyday life -- in unprecedented and original fashion -- giving him great sway. For them, his authority is traditionally unquestioned, and his modest office down a ramshackle alley in Najaf is besieged daily by followers seeking aid or answers to religious questions.

    His statements about the U.S. occupation do not carry the weight of a fatwa, the only such edict that would be binding. But his remarks come at a time when some of his supporters in Najaf have complained about his reclusiveness, particularly as two other groups, with a distinctly more political agenda, are vying for the support of the country's majority.

    "We wish he would talk more forcefully, but he would never accept," said Kamal Abdullah Bahr Ulum, 62, a resident of Najaf and supporter of Sistani. "If he made a fatwa tomorrow to act, no one would remain in their home."

    Bear in mind that it was Sistani who derailed the Iraqi Governing Council's transitional agreemment, and who demands Islamic veto power over any legislation "contrary to Islam":
    [T]he November 15 "Agreement on Political Process" [was] single-handedly derailed by Iraq's most senior Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Hussein al-Sistani. Under this agreement, a transitional assembly selected through regional caucuses would form a fully sovereign Iraqi government on July 1, 2004, based on a "Fundamental Law" — or interim constitution — now being worked out within agreed parameters by the CPA and IGC.

    Ayatollah Sistani has insisted on direct elections for the transitional assembly, as well as assurances that the interim constitution will defer to Islam, most likely in the form of a blanket prohibition against any legislation deemed contrary to Islam by unelected clerical overseers. His first demand, which concerns electoral mechanics, is eminently negotiable; but his second, which wholly subordinates politics to religious ideology (Islamism), unduly risks creating a failed state.

    At least one analyst has noted the irony of creating Iranian-style religious veto power in Iraq:

    Sistani's latest fatwa forced Bremer to recognise what is happening. By taking the ayatollah's fatwas into account, Bremer had given him both a veto and the right to intervene. Although Bremer has attempted to distance himself from Sistani, it is uncertain that he will manage to secure independence. Having lent an ear in to Sistani's pronouncements in the first place, Bremer cannot now ignore the grand ayatollah. Some members of Iraq's appointed Governing Council, who followed Bremer's lead, also, belatedly, saw the danger that Sistani could marginalise the Council and deprive it of the limited consultative powers it possesses.

    However, the Council itself is divided because some Shia members are inclined to accept Sistani's authority. This split could weaken the Council and strengthen Sistani. Even if Bremer and the Iraqi Governing Council manage to resist Sistani and prevent the rise of clerical rule, the grand ayatollah and the Hawza will remain significant players on the Iraqi political scene.

    It is, therefore, ironic that 15 years after the end of the eight year Iraq-Iran war which halted Tehran's attempt to export its Islamic Revolution to Iraq by subverting that country's Shia majority, Bush could very well be in the process of installing in Iraq the very clerical regime Khomeini had in mind. Khomeini's shade must be chuckling as it observes developments in Iraq. Furthermore, if Sistani becomes the main power-broker in Iraq, this means the million soldiers and civilians who lost their lives on both sides in the Iraq-Iran conflict may have died in vain and the tens of billions of dollars spent by Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to halt the export of the Iranian revolution were wasted. It also means that Washington, sooner rather than later, better reconcile and seek rapprochement with Tehran, the Shia power in West Asia.

    I know that I am too cynical, and I try to work on it. But I certainly hope that this imminent deal is not a product of the type of thinking Alan Sullivan described recently in a post called "Naming the Enemy." I wish the president would read Alan's warnings (at least, I think they should be considered warnings!) about caving to fundamentalism (plus I loved what he said about the obfuscatory nature of language):

    Most word-workers puff up with pleasure if one concedes that we live in a world shaped by language; but I find it horrifying, because words are so malleable, imprecise, and overesteemed. Most of humanity believes in the divinity of one scripture or another: words to be obeyed, words to be spread, words to erase all other words. I suspect that a real god, if there were one, would not speak to us in words, but in silence. It would no more communicate through a man who takes his own inner promptings for commandments than the CIA would communicate with a lunatic through his dentures.

    ....Right now I see two different word-systems merging into a single, dangerous instrument of mass delusion. One derives from dissident factions in the Christian culture of Europe. It could be called Marxist, but it is much more than a critique of the European nation-state at mid-Nineteenth Century. In the materialistic and secular West, Marxism has devolved from a flawed but intellectually rigorous analysis to a hodgepodge of sentimental and romantic fallacies.

    The other derives from Islam--a scripturally-obsessed culture that has stagnated since the Fifteenth Century. Islam has no idea where it can fit in a world that reduces the word of Allah to one narrative among many. Many of its fervent adherents dream of subsuming other deities and polities, incorporating them into a new caliphate. I have until now called the followers and sympathizers of al Qaeda Islamist. Most Americans (notably President Bush) eschew this term because they believe it implicitly places too much blame on Islam itself. What if the President is wrong? Some scholars of the Qu'ran admit that their scripture provides much fodder for frenzy. Maybe the president subliminally fears to admit this possibility, which calls scripture itself into question, and potentially threatens his own faith.

    Those are, simply, brilliant and astute observations.

    I believe Alan is also dead-on in identifying this primary fear of offending religious conservatives by calling "scripture itself into question" -- because that is seen everywhere as a potential threat -- both to their own brand of faith, and more importantly, to political power. Fundamentalists (or biblical literalists, or whatever you want to call them) will not question fundamentalism of the Iranian variety or any variety; they must either label it as "heresy" or try to pretend it really isn't all that bad.....

    Pretending it "isn't all that bad" may appear to be smart politics right now. But statesmen are supposed think about what is best in the long term.

    This has been very worrisome to me for some time, and I am happy not to be alone in my concerns. Read Alan's entire post -- and think about Iraq. In just a few cogent sentences, he says what would take me many thousands of words -- spanning many thousands of years!

    I sincerely hope that my misgivings about a potential "fundamentalist fix" in Iraq prove misplaced.

    I guess we'll see.

    UPDATE: Gibberish in Neutral reports some fascinating observations by the Ayatollah Sistani about the "istihaza" and the "mustahaza" (the rules governing menstrual discharges). Bloody hilarious! Go! Read it!

    Then sin no more!

    posted by Eric at 10:46 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)



    Another original idea -- stolen!

    If there's one thing I hate, it's when I think up a completely original idea and discover that some con artist has stolen it.

    Over a year before I thought of it, too!

    That hurts.

    Plus, all he has one lousy post -- and an insulting one at that:

    Hello. If you've come here by accident you must be extremely bored, or perverted. I'm not sure which is worse.
    Can't these people get a life?

    Harrumph!

    posted by Eric at 12:16 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)




    Penetrating legal issues

    I never thought I would stoop so low as to blog about this latest outbreak of popular hysteria (the neogladiatorial nature of the Michael Jackson case), but the way the television was acting last night, I feel a need to comment -- as briefly as I can.

    An accused criminal defendant was (gasp!) a full twenty one minutes late for a court appearance!

    The way the commentators are talking, you'd think that the country was on the verge of collapse.

    And now, I run the risk of violating the unstated rule of blogging that it just isn't cool to blog about Jackson.

    So let's just forget that Michael Jackson is the defendant. Let's try to remember the rule of law. (And perhaps simple logic.)

    Years ago, I practiced a modest amount of criminal law, and for a brief period I worked with the San Francisco Public Defender's Office, as a legal intern with my law school's Criminal Law Clinic. Criminal defendants would often arrive late for hearings. We would try to shuffle things around as best we could, hoping that the judge would call the case later. Sometimes it worked, and with luck no one noticed. With stricter judges, maybe not.

    Normally, if a defendant is not present when his case is called, one of three things could happen. An automatic bench warrant for his arrest could be issued. If he shows after that, the judge might (or might not) be persuaded to revoke the warrant. The judge could also hold the defendant in contempt.

    Or (as the judge did today), he could give the defendant a warning and a lecture. There is nothing new about any of this.

    Michael Jackson's judge, if he wanted to maintain order in his court, could also have gone the bench warrant or contempt citation route.

    This is hardly the end of Western Civilization; it's called maintaining control of the court.

    That the judge didn't do that is really the judge's problem. Maybe, like Judge Ito in the OJ Simpson case, he is thinking about retirement, book deals, and a career on television himself. That might make him a weak-willed judge in the eyes of many, but to blame Michael Jackson is to give the man power he really does not have.

    How is it the end of Western Civilization when an individual judge acts like a wimp?

    Likewise, some of the religious fundamentalists are giving Michael Jackson power he does not have by transforming him into a poster boy for NAMBLA against his will. Bear in mind that Jackson is a Muslim (although the sincerity of his conversion has been questioned), he has condemned homosexuality, and he claims to be against sex with minors.

    Hardly NAMBLA material, and hardly "gay" -- in my view. Yet many (including some bloggers) try hard to make him into a demonic part of the vast "gay conspiracy."

    (To be fair, some of them claim that members of this conspiracy include Bill Clinton, the Masons, the Catholics, Winthrop Rockefeller, Hubert Humphrey, Paul Tsongas, Martin Luther King....)

    These people are trying to have their cake and eat it too. It reminds me of the sodomy nonsense.

    Rape is not the same as consensual sex. Yet the term "sodomy" -- as it is used by people claiming to believe in biblical literalism -- is used to mean consensual homosexual sex. This truly perverted view of "sodomy" as consensual sex is simply not supported by a literal reading of the Biblical account of Sodom (which involved threats to break down the door to a home in order to rape the occupants thereof). A simple reading belies the claim that they take the Bible at its word. If it is sex at all, "sodomy" is rape -- and if angels are male, then it means homosexual rape. Just because legislators over the years have used the word to describe any sexual acts they didn't like (including things done between husbands and wives) does not change what the Bible says.

    By using the term "sodomy" to describe things other than rape, the fundamentalists themselves show that they practice what they claim to hate: Biblical interpretation!

    Very forced interpretation at that. Gratuitous insertion of unwanted things into "holy" places.

    Why, I think they may have been "sodomizing" their own Bibles!

    Yecchhh!

    (I won't let 'em come near mine!)

    posted by Eric at 01:00 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)




    Judging the fear of death?

    Here is a very thoughtful post, which I thought I should answer in my blog; I also posted much of what follows as a comment to the post. (Via InstaPundit.)

    This very articulate blogger -- Phil Bowermaster -- maintains that death sucks, and he is right (although he says a few things with which I must disagree slightly.)

    Death sucks.

    Some say that dying is as natural as being born. I say, so what? Vomiting is as natural as eating, but I happen to like eating a lot more.

    Some say that death is a part of life. I contend that, by definition, it is not.

    Some say that death is the threshold to the next stage of existence. I say maybe so. But this stage seems to have a natural built-in aversion to the threshold to that stage, and I'm going to go with that.

    Many believe that the fear of death is a primitive relic, a lingering superstition. Fear of death, they will tell us, is what originally led humanity to irrational thinking. We invented gods and spirits primarily to assuage this fear. Now we live in an age when rational thinking might once again hold sway, although irrationalism persists all around. To differentiate themselves from the irrational throng, rational thinkers proudly state that they are not afraid of dying.

    ....

    Those who claim to have no fear of death, whether they be an Objectivist or the Dalai Lama or some Palestinian strapping dynamite to his chest, have lost touch with a primary truth of human existence: a truth which has lead us both to science and to faith.

    Death sucks so much I wanted to kill myself over it!

    It's true that death sucks, but sometimes, so does the fear of death.

    And sometimes, so does life!

    Fear of death may be a healthy motivator, but it can go too far. To live each day as if it were your last -- yet at the same time not live in fear of death -- that strikes me as an ideal. Healthy fear is good (I am not recommending suicidal lifestyles) but wasting too much time fearing the inevitable can prevent the enjoyment of life, thus calling into question the value of fearing its loss!

    What I cannot stand is to have self-appointed "leaders" like Leon Kass lecture me or anyone else on the need for a "natural" lifespan, how the "dignity" of life is to be defined, or the immorality of extending it any way I might want.

    If it isn't my life, then it isn't my death. No one really ought to assign values (or fears) of either -- other than the person living or dying.

    While I don't mean to sound too morbid, I lost twenty friends to AIDS and this stuff was much "in my face" for years. This forced me to develop tougher-than-normal death calluses -- and a sort of gallows humor.

    At times, I have found it most beneficial to turn off the natural fear of death. Far from missing out on anything, I honestly feel that I gleaned new insights -- and (quite paradoxically) saved my life, which I now value more than I did before the experience.

    With all respect to the wisdom of Phil Bowermaster's excellent post, I do not agree that negating the fear of death causes one to "lose touch with a primary truth of human existence." It brought me closer!

    (On the other hand, those who claim falsely to have no fear of death only confirm the truth of the Mr. Bowermaster's assertions, for obvious reasons. Their fear -- as evidenced by their dishonest denial -- is infinitely greater than those who admit the fear honestly.)

    I also have to disagree on a very minor point (but one with obvious relevance to Classical Values): vomiting was once combined with eating, and considered quite pleasurable!

    In the minds of believers in God as well as in the minds of atheists, the fear of death is considered a major reason for religion. People who believe in God often assert that only God has ultimate control over life and death. I see no logical reason why the concept of death should bring them into conflict with atheists, or anybody else. Because as they admit themselves, God is in control of the entire process, and therefore, whatever happens was meant to happen as Ordained by God. That would include whatever life extension measures any individual wanted to take. To interfere with that -- in the name of God -- strikes me as coming awfully close to substituting their judgment and their will for the will of God. (One might as well argue that an individual has no right to take penicillin for an otherwise fatal illness lest he "interfere" with "God's plan.")

    So, the people who would tell me when God would have me die are doing precisely what they accuse me of doing if I wanted to extend my life.

    Except unlike me, they aren't minding the business of their own lives.


    UPDATE: I just found this in Phil Bowermaster's blog:

    I believe the struggle that's shaping up in this world is going to take place between those who believe that we should be defined by our limits — and who have restrictive and pointless notions as to what those limits are — and those who refuse to be so defined.
    I couldn't have put it better! (Look out Paul Ehrlich, Leon Kass....)

    posted by Eric at 06:56 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)



    Elected unanimously! The world's NEWEST GOD!

    Last night I invented a new god, and now I am finally getting around to writing the post about it. Or, uh, him.

    I refer to the brand-new god of ideological purity!

    It is not the purpose of this post to discuss ideological purity in the depth it deserves, but briefly, I believe that it is at the root of more killing than almost any other type of human thought. The human need to simplify, purify, distill those odious philosophies which tell others what to do -- into ascertainable words and concepts -- proves irresistible to many. Ideological purists are the ones who mold the words and concepts, as well as maintain conformity to them by rooting out heresy. There isn't an "ism" which is not maintained by ideological purists, although not all isms were necessarily intended to end up that way. (Jesus might have been horrified at the excesses of ideological purity in his name, and who knows? So might Muhammad and Marx....)

    I must give credit to One Fine Jay for encouraging -- and acccelerating -- this post. For had he not noticed my research last night, this would have languished on the back burner (like so many complicated things).

    Anyway, the point here is to nominate, vote for, and elect the God of Ideological Purity.

    Jay has asked me to disclose the name of the God, and, while I hate to get into prolonged guessing games, I didn't like to spoil the surprise. I told Jay he wasn't Hitler, nor Jesus, and that in fact, most Americans have never heard of this man.

    But for many years, nothing happened in the Cold War without him having something to say about it. Disagreement with him could cost careers if not lives. And, as I said to Jay, he was definitely not cool or sexy!

    Enough of this drivel, and on to immortality.

    While it didn't take long to decide on the man himself, it took quite a bit of research time before I finally found a decent picture (probably the only one on the web) of the infamous ideologist-in-chief of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Suslov!

    I had concluded that this one would be the best up with which I could come (?). (Suslov is the man partially visible just behind and to the right of Khrushchev's wife and to the left of Brezhnev.)

    But in search of a good picture I kept looking, sifting through page after page of this tedious (he was at least as tedious as he was murderous) man's descriptions, biographies, mentions, ruminations. Of course, statistics....

    Oh, what the hell! I know you're all dying for a short summary of the career of this dreary and nasty man and ideologue. Here's the best short write-up I could find:

    Mikhail Suslov, the Politburo member who served as the party’s top watchdog over ideological matters, was a typical Stalinist. He managed to retain his position and his restrictive influence over information flows, both during and after the de-Stalinization campaign of 1956-1962. Khrushchev evidently thought Suslov would generally follow his (Khrushchev’s) lead. He was mistaken; Suslov showed himself to be a tough and resourceful character. After Khrushchev’s fall from power in 1964, Suslov gained almost total domination over Agitprop. The next party chief, Leonid Brezhnev, was too lazy and too submissive to others’ opinions to make a serious effort to curb Suslov.

    Temporary Reversal
    Suslov suffered a political setback in the late 1960s when he prepared official documents rehabilitating Stalin. About a hundred personalities from the Soviet cultural elite learned of this development from knowledgeable consultants and Central Committee members who did not like the idea. Writers, actors, artists, musicians, journalists, and other representatives of the intelligentsia,traditionally influential in Russian society, signed a letter to Brezhnev and the Central Committee.

    Brezhnev, who did not like sharp political movements in any direction, overruled Suslov. Despite this setback, Suslov retained his Politburo seat and remained influential into the 1970s as an advocate for ideological orthodoxy. He died in 1982.

    (But he never knew I would promote him to the status of godhead, did he?)

    And finally, here -- the picture you've been waiting for! Lovable chap, no?

    Doesn't his lovely face positively radiate ideological purity?

    Suslov, at eighteen already a liquidator of Kulaks, eventually the "Hangman of Lithuania", knew whom to kill. Disagreement with him was not a good career move.

    Fortunately, even guys like Suslov can make mistakes. (Well, he was getting old at the time; maybe he'd been conned.)

    His biggest mistake?

    Mikhail Gorbachev -- who under Suslov's austere tutelage, doubtless learned how to talk the talk! (Fortunately for Suslov, he died not long after Gorbachev's accession to the Politburo, and never had to see the irreversible damage his protégé would do to his precious ideology.)

    I think it is entirely fitting that the God of Ideological Purity was guilty of such a screw-up!

    Suslov's nomination (to his new post, "God of Ideological Purity") saw little debate (there was none, in fact), and he was ushered in by unanimous vote, followed by long, thunderous applause.....

    (I dared not STOP clapping.)

    posted by Eric at 03:23 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (2)



    Are terrorists disabled?

    Arthur Silber recently noticed lax security measures in Washington DC. This reminded me of something....

    Normally, I don't go around looking for loopholes or thinking like a terrorist, but if I did....

    Well, is this ethical to discuss in my blog? I don't know, but this idea is starting to bother me, so I might as well write about it.

    With ever-increasing security concerns, were I a terrorist (whether a suicide bomber, conventional attacker, or someone who wanted to smuggle in weapons, bombs, or biological threats) the ideal weakness would be something that:

  • allows easy access (anyone with the right "credentials" can drive right up -- ahead of everyone else)
  • bypasses regular security out of "sympathy"
  • allows large, bulky devices to be waived (waved?) past normal security
  • renders those with the "right" to use it appear inherently "harmless"
  • So what am I talking about?

    DISABLED ACCESS, that's what!

    Even the largest, most secure buildings all have special parking for the disabled, and security is very sloppy, because people in wheelchairs are seen as victims, and associated either with pity or political correctness. Society does not want to inconvenience the disabled, and Americans are very generous, considerate people.

    How many of these rent-a-cops really know what the hell is inside one of those motorized wheelchairs, anyway? Or how to spot the difference between someone who's paralyzed and an actor?

    (Or how much C-4 could be stuffed inside the various nooks and crannies.....)

    This is not a new concern. This disabled man was very upset about the possible havoc someone in his position might wreak:

    I am very concerned that flying may be a little too easy for us rollers. With domestic terrorism on the rise, I'm honestly worried about the cursory examination I get when going through airport security. If I were a terrorist I could smuggle just about anything smaller than a tank to the gate without anyone being the wiser.

    ....

    No airport security person has ever seen or searched the pouch, let alone looked under my chair. I assure you that my little pouch is big enough for a 9 mm handgun and an extra clip for my Uzi, which I could have duct-taped to the underside of my Combi cushion, for all the security personnel would know.

    But when it comes to smuggling weapons onto a plane, a manual chair is small potatoes. It's a power wheelchair that would be a terrorist's dream! My battery-powered friends tell me they get an even more cursory search at airports than I do. Security personnel never look under power chairs either, let alone open the battery boxes, which are themselves big enough to hold enough plastic explosive to vaporize a 747.

    I have no idea whether the right people are doing their jobs, but it does strike me that security concerns and concerns over disabled access operate under very different assumptions.

    Different mindsets, even.

    (I'd take maximum advantage of that if I were a terrorist.)

    posted by Eric at 11:40 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (2)



    Psychotic but contented German poseur from Spain wants to be Bounty Captain!

    What a strange group of tests today! (Friday is Online Test Day at Classical Values, so I have no choice but to bare my soul.)


    First, I was told that I am not a nerd:



    take the nerd test.
    and go to mewing.net. a nerd utopia.


    While that sounds normal enough, the next test showed that I am .....


    A PSYCHO!


    Psycho. You are overwhelmed by anger. You may even
    hate the world and everything in it and you
    believe revenge is the way of the world. An eye
    for an eye.


    How Emotional Are You?
    brought to you by Quizilla


    But rest assured, my dear readers, for I am a contented psycho!


    HASH(0x887a070)
    What's Your Outlook on Life?

    brought to you by Quizilla

    All three of the above quizzes I found at ALLANLINGZ (And WATCH OUT for the popups at that site!)




    Still muttering incomprehensible gibberish as a result of such maddeningly inconsistent results, I thought that taking a test which I could not understand at all might be the best therapy.

    So I found this test -- written entirely in German -- and I answered all the questions purely on the basis of which German words looked the most appealing emotionally!

    Here are my results. I have no idea what they mean.


    error
    du bist ein ameise-typ


    was fuer ein bloggertyp bist du ?
    brought to you by Quizilla

    Maybe someone out there can fill me in.....

    Via Wuddels Blog.




    Continuing the European theme, here's the "Country Quiz" -- and I happen to be Spain:




    You're Spain!

    You like rain on the plain, as well as interesting architecture and a diverse number of races and religions.  You like to explore a lot, but sailing, especially in large groups, never really seems to work out for you.  Beware of pirates and dictators bearing bombs.  And for heavens' sake, stop running around bulls!
     It's just not safe!

    Take
    the Country Quiz at the href="http://bluepyramid.org">Blue Pyramid

    (Via Sheila Astray's Redheaded Ramblings)




    Finally, for some sanity and stability, I turned to the Greatest Test Giver in the Blogosphere, Ghost of a flea. Contrary to my usual pattern, I obtained different results from the Flea in both tests.

    The first is "which Firefly character are you?" I'm the Captain -- but I don't know if it's a good idea to give entrust such a position to contented psychos who are not nerds and take tests in languages they don't speak!



    "The Captain"


    Which Firefly character are you?
    brought to you by Quizilla

    (And here's the Flea's link)




    The best for last. "Which Typical Anti-Hero Are You?" also came from the Flea, who got a much cooler result. He gets to be a Vampire -- while I'm a bounty hunter!

    You's a bounty hunter, bi-yatch!
    Which Typical Anti-Hero Are You?

    brought to you by Quizilla


    Hey Nicholas, can I peek at your test answers when I'm taking these tests?

    posted by Eric at 11:01 AM | TrackBacks (0)




    Encouraging malignancy....

    Years ago, when I served on Berkeley's Police Review Commission, a tenant filed a complaint against the police for refusing to arrest the tenant's landlord.

    The charge?

    Attempted murder!

    That was because the landlord dared to smoke in his own building -- in which he happened to live. (Berkeley Rent Control is another issue entirely -- but I feel sorry for anyone unfortunate enough to be a landlord in Berkeley.)

    In the tenant's view, the police were guilty of misconduct for refusing to arrest the landlord -- who was clearly attempting to murder his tenants.

    Now, when you sit on review boards, you are supposed to let the process run its course, and you have to be impartial. (It's very similar to being a judge.) But this complaint seemed so patently ridiculous at the time that all the commissioners -- both far left and regular left -- rolled their eyes knowingly, clearly thinking "Do we really have to hear this?" ("Another wack job!" -- although no one would admit to such political incorrectness.)

    Surely, you would think, no one would take such nonsense seriously. Such a person might be pitied -- and clearly has the same right to hold opinions and be heard as anyone else, but people in positions of responsibility would never actually encourage them, would they?

    Believe it or not, the ideologically pure people of the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association decided to help this tenant. They took the matter most seriously, and supplied letters of support!

    Stuff like that helped me in my political evolution to the cynical believer in compromise that I am today.

    And today I stumbled into a situation I consider analogous. Surfing around, I saw that WorldNetDaily is now pushing a web site devoted to opposing George W. Bush's continuing in office. Not only has he violated his oath of office, but he has violated his covenant with God! Perusing the web site in detail, I saw that the principal objections involve SODOMY!

    Bush is pro-sodomy!

    Hey, it was news to me too, but I decided to investigate.

    I checked to see who the hell the site's proprietors were, and saw a name which immediately rang a bell: Michael Marcavage.

    Mr. Marcavage is a local activist -- right around here -- who loves to get arrested -- mostly at gay-friendly events, but he also enjoys grossing people out and distracting drivers by waving huge placards of mutilated fetuses, and he managed to get himself arrested picketing a condom store on South Street.

    While a student at Temple University, he demanded that the school give him a stage and an amplified sound system so he could counter a play he considered blasphemous. From that point the story diverges: his side is that they hauled him away to the loony bin for praying in the bathroom; Temple says he locked himself in the bathroom and wouldn't come out for fifteen minutes so they called a locksmith and then had him taken off in an ambulance.

    Hey; this man has his rights. I would never deny them. I am not sure whether they include the right to amplified sound (of which he seems fond) and I am not sure how large the dead fetus placards should be (can I advertise my blog like that?) -- but never mind the details. I'll grant him the right to wave huge billboards, put on sound events, yell at everyone with a bullhorn.....

    Hell, he can even continue his "judicial career" for all I care -- and sit as a judge on the "ecclesiastical Court, sometimes called a Court of Divine Justice." (Here's a list of Marcavage's actual legal proceedings.) All fine! Legal!

    And he can launch a website exposing George W. Bush as a religious heretic who God should not allow to hold office!

    Now, I could see support of this guy coming from Reverend Phelps -- or (as it does) from Reverend Ovadahl's Homo Fascist Watch.

    But why is a leading, responsible, website like WorldNetDaily encouraging him?

    Why, they're starting to act like the American Cancer Society!

    As to Mr. Marcavage, I am sorry to sound so cynical (and maybe I've been around too long) but I just smell another op. (Not the first time, either!)

    Take a look at his alleged background:

    CLP Senior Trial Attorney Brian Fahling, who is handling the case, said, "This kid is as solid as a rock. Besides being a college student on the Dean's List, Michael was a White House intern with security clearance, is founder and president of a ministry called Protect the Children, president of his own business, and a volunteer who has worked with Campus Crusade for Christ and gone oversees with Feed the Children," Fahling said. "This is a good Christian kid who wanted to stand up for Jesus, and instead was handcuffed and dragged to a mental hospital as if he'd been seeing pink elephants."
    At the risk of being paranoid, I must ask a question.

    Why is a former Clinton White House intern with a security clearance doing all of this?

    Dare I ask the question so often posed in who-done-it cases? (Who benefits?)

    As usual, I can't prove any of my suspicions, but like fellow traveler Fred Phelps, the man seems to be doing a Hell of a good job of doing the Devil's work!

    Even the Devil has First Amendment rights.....

    UPDATE: Eugene Volokh reports on the appeal of Harry Hammond; a case with similarities to Michael Marcavage. (Glenn Reynolds is still blaming Ashcroft.)

    And I defended Hammond's rights last summer, just as I defend Marcavage's now.

    What people need to keep in mind though, is that holders of obnoxiously racist views have just as much right to exercise their views -- on street corners, with bullhorns -- as Marcavage or Hammond. The number of people they might offend (or the "group" to which those offended might belong) is irrelevant.


    UPDATE: Interested readers can heard Reverend Ovadahl's interview with Michael Marcavage (along with another man convicted of "disrupting a lawful assembly" by preaching at a Halloween event) by clicking here.


    MORE: And, speaking of street preaching, meet Chuck Spingola. Definitely a colorful street warrior, Spingola has been arrested for strangling a gay man during a confrontation, and is quoted as saying that,

    if a few homosexual activists were killed, then "the rest of them will go back in the closet."

    I am all for free speech. But I am not sure I am willing to go with strangling as a form of free expression....

    Why, in a political context, strangling your opponent might even be considered akin to censorship!




    Musical interlude!


    This was fun music to stream while I was writing this post. (Link via InstaPundit.)

    Normally, when I delve into topics like this, I get all whatever-the-opposite-of-sentimental-is and play some of my favorite tunes for that mood. Shifting sands, brother-against-brother stuff.....

    Like this.


    posted by Eric at 11:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)



    "A soap opera, kind of."

    Are bloggers "a generation of compulsive self-chroniclers, a fleet of juvenile Marcel Prousts gone wild"?

    Last weekend was a big weekend for discussion of blogging in the mainstream media. Tim Russert's Meet the Press devoted half the show to a sort of roundtable on blogging (which has drawn a lot of attention; Jeff Jarvis has an excellent and very thorough discussion here. And InstaPundit has more here).

    I watched the program myself, and the "consensus" seemed to be that blogging consists of mostly:

  • political campaign blog sites, run by candidates or their supporters; OR
  • a bunch of people just "talking to each other"
  • In other words, blogging is inherently frivolous, right?

    Pursuing the blogging-as-frivolity "meme" to its ultimate conclusion, Emily Nussbaum, writing in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, devotes five long pages (titled My So-Called Blog) to the idea that blogging is a mostly childish activity:

    According to figures released last October by Perseus Development Corporation, a company that designs software for online surveys, there are expected to be 10 million blogs by the end of 2004. In the news media, the blog explosion has been portrayed as a transformation of the industry, a thousand minipundits blooming. But the vast majority of bloggers are teens and young adults. Ninety percent of those with blogs are between 13 and 29 years old; a full 51 percent are between 13 and 19, according to Perseus. Many teen blogs are short-lived experiments. But for a significant number, they become a way of life, a daily record of a community's private thoughts -- a kind of invisible high school that floats above the daily life of teenagers.
    Focusing on the child-blogger statistics serves only as a starting point. Most of the piece is an exposé of blogging's near-total frivolity:
    A typical page shows a dated list of entries, beginning with the most recent. Many posts are short, surrealistic one-liners: ''I just peeled a freckle off my neck. Does that mean it's not a freckle?'' Others are more like visual poems, featuring a quirky series of scanned pictures (monkeys and robots are popular), a quote from a favorite song or a link to a strange news story. Some posts consist of transcripts of instant-message conversations, posted with or without permission (a tradition I discovered when a boy copied one of our initial online conversations under the heading ''i like how older people have grammar online'').

    But a significant number of writers treat their journals as actual diaries, toting up detailed accounts of their day. ''I watched the miracle of life today in bio, and it was such a huge letdown,'' read one post. ''I was expecting it to be funny and sexual but it was way too scientific for my liking, and a bit yucky too, but not as bad as people made it out to be. Although, my not being able to laugh made me feel a bit too old. Current mood: disappointed.''

    Ms. Nussbaum moves on to an inside look at how bloggers make profound, soul-searching decisions about such things as comments policies and linking:
    ''If I get a really mean comment and I go back and I look at it again, and again, it starts to bother me,'' M. told me. ''But then I think, If I delete it, everyone will know this bothers me. But if I respond, it'll mean I need to fight back. So it turns into a conflict, but it's fun. It's like a soap opera, kind of.''

    It's a drama heightened by the fact that journals are linked to one another, creating a constant juxtaposition of posts among the students. For example, on LiveJournal, you can click a ''friends'' link and catch up on your friends' experiences without ever speaking, with everyone's accounts posted next to one another in a kind of word collage. For many, this transforms daily life. Teen bloggers are constantly considering how they'll turn a noteworthy moment into an online post. After a party or a concert, these accounts can amount to a prismatic portrait of the evening.

    But even this endless linking only begins to touch on the complex ways these blogs are obsessively interconnected and personalized. L. has had an online journal for two and a half years, and it has morphed along with her. At first, her interest list (part of the user profile) consisted of topics like aromatherapy, yoga and Zen -- each of which linked to people with the same interest. She deleted that list and started over. In her next phase, she was obsessed with Freudian psychology. Now she lists fashion trends and belongs to the Flapper, Saucy Dwellings and Sex Tips blog rings.

    No wonder I can't seem to find my proper place in the blogosphere! I need to devote more time to Flapper, Saucy Dwellings and Sex Tips (after I've exhausted my aromatherapy, yoga and Zen, of course....)

    There's much more (you should read the whole thing, but I can't resist sharing a few nuggets):

    instant-messaged compulsively; they gossiped online

    With so much confessional drama
    revelations of insecurity alternate with chest-beating bombast, juvenile jokes and self-mocking claims of sexual prowess
    documenting milestones (a learner's permit!), philosophical insights, complaints about parental dorkiness and plans for something called Operation Backfire
    And there's even an "emo makeover" -- the wearing of "tight, dark jeans and ''forcibl[e] retire[ment]'' of "old sneakers." (Hey there! I'm an EMO -- and I take this very seriously!)

    Pretty serious stuff, eh?

    I guess I'm just not young enough to be offended by Ms. Nussbaum's piece. Sure, there are young people blogging about life. School sucks, parents suck, you hate your boyfriend/girlfriend, and your enemies are all dorks!

    Knocking young people while trivializing blogging is easy if you just stick to the facts!

    (That way you don't have to worry about bloggers your own age.)

    Notwithstanding my concerns about stereotyping, I should give the Devil her due here. Ms. Nussbaum makes a good point when she asks whether the massive sharing of personal angst is necessarily good for the young people who do it:

    A result of all this self-chronicling is that the private experience of adolescence -- a period traditionally marked by seizures of self-consciousness and personal confessions wrapped in layers and hidden in a sock drawer -- has been made public. Peer into an online journal, and you find the operatic texture of teenage life with its fits of romantic misery, quick-change moods and sardonic inside jokes. Gossip spreads like poison. Diary writers compete for attention, then fret when they get it. And everything parents fear is true.
    This may be a legitimate fear for parents, who might be well advised to caution their children that everything they write could be used against them later. But the idea that blogging invades the privacy of the bloggers -- when blogging is by definition public -- that seems to be a rather odd criticism.

    Should I should sue myself (and all of my readers) for invading my privacy?

    Perhaps it would be unfair to expect too much consistency from someone who called CBS's cancellation of its own series "de facto censorship."

    Yeah! Emily Nussbaum knows all about de facto.

    She's definitely an expert, at the very least she's "so-called."

    Maybe even "kind of...."

    posted by Eric at 10:50 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)



    Lileks bad! Chomsky good!

    Bloggers are saying that this Dennis Perrin guy (whose attack on James Lileks has attracted a great deal of attention) just isn't even worth fisking, so why bother?

    Besides, as Lileks himself says, "Who cares?" (Via InstaPundit.)

    So instead of bothering (what could I add anyway?) I'll just do what I did with Leon Kass, and supply my readers with a few choice quotes from Dennis Perrin -- the ones that appealed to my "political" and "aesthetic" sensibilities -- with a "minimum" of editorial comment.

    Let Mr. Perrin speak for himself!

    What bothered me almost as much as the attack on Lileks was the way he went out of his way to characterize people as mindless "warbloggers" (something Mitch Berg discusses in more detail). So I wondered what Mr. Perrin might have said about other people.

    It turns out he is not even loyal to his own "friends." Here's his vicious, extremely ad hominem attack on an old friend, Christopher Hitchens -- whom he now describes as a:

    former socialist and Beltway snitch who finally showed his true colors as a shill for W's gang
    In a heart-wrenching psychological tug-of-war, Perrin seems to struggle, almost agonize, over what remains of his "friendship":

    it's hard for me to erase the fond memories I have of Hitch.
    I know how hard it must be. It's hard for all of us watching you. It must be very painful for you, having to attack an old friend. I feel your pain even as I write this.
    unlike Christopher, I do not revel in blasting apart strangers.
    That must make it doubly hard for you. (Once again, the Drayton Sawyer principle at work.)
    His TV appearances show a smug, nasty scold with little tolerance for those who disagree with him. He looks more and more like a Ralph Steadman sketch.

    But let's try to remember, Perrin "tries"

    to keep my criticisms politically and aesthetically based.

    And how he tries! In the comments that follow, here he is, trying to be as fair to others as he is to Hitchens.

    On Andrew Sullivan:

    Sullivan.... remains one of the most arrogant, pretentious jerks I've ever met.

    On David Horowitz:

    the insane David Horowitz, a man who shouts "TREASON!" every 90 seconds
    And back to the emotional tug-of-war with "friend" Hitchens:
    I wrote a long defense of Christopher in answer to Cockburn's "Hitch the Snitch" tirade, but I wasn't fully behind him.
    How tough it is! Having to defend a friend you aren't "behind"! My heart really can only begin to feel his pain. Get thee behind me, Dennis Perrin!

    Doubtless still feeling his own pain, but steeling himself, Perrin

    was flabbergasted by the venom Hitch directed at people like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn

    Imagine! How could anyone have directed venom towards the kindly, Khmer Rouge loving Chomsky! (To say nothing of Zinn -- author of A People's History of the United States!)

    But, hold on!

    Might Mr. Perrin possibly owe Chomsky a debt of gratitude?

    Might they even be friends? Here's Chomsky himself, talking about Dennis Perrin:

    In accordance with the regular pattern, two positions are represented: the media are attacked as too adversarial, unfair to Israel in this case; and they are defended as doing a creditable job under difficult circumstances. There is barely a nod given to the possibility that they might be guided by a different bias. In a question from the audience, media analyst Dennis Perrin asked ABC Israel Bureau Chief Bill Seamans why the media continue to claim that the PLO refused to recognize Israel's rights in the face of a series of statements by Arafat, which he cites, "calling for mutual security guarantees and mutual recognition." Seamans's response is that Arafat "has not made a clearcut, definitive statement recognizing Israel's right to exist," but has always added qualifications. Panelist Howard Squadron of the American Jewish Congress then dismisses Perrin's comments as "utter nonsense," and there the matter ends.

    Seamans's comment is quite accurate: Arafat has added the qualification that Palestinians should have rights comparable to those accorded Israeli Jews. It is also true that U.S.-Israeli statements have no taint of ambiguity, being unfailingly rejectionist. That stand, by definition, conforms to the requirements of peace, moderation, and justice, so nothing need be said about it.

    I guess that's the end of that argument! Chomsky and Perrin have settled it! Arafat and PLO good. US and Israel bad!

    Perhaps in a state of grief over his faltering friendship with Hitchens, Perrin saw the need to sign (along with Chomsky) this petition, which, while purporting to condemn Cuban repression of dissidents, condemns the United States more harshly than Cuba:

    Democratic change in Cuba needs to be achieved by the Cuban people themselves. The Cuban government's violations of democratic rights do not justify sanctions or any other form of intervention by the United States in Cuba. The government of the United States — which employs the rhetoric of human rights when doing so promotes its imperial goals, but maintains a discreet silence or makes only token protests when U.S. allies are involved, and which fully supports the barbaric practice of capital punishment, routinely inflicted in the U.S. — is hardly in a position to preach democracy and human rights.

    And we recall too the long, criminal record of U.S. interventions in Latin America. This record has included six decades of exploitation and imperial control of Cuba, followed by an attempted invasion and a campaign of international terrorism and economic warfare, that is by now well-documented. Only a government that repudiated this record, renounced any intention of restoring its economic or political domination over Cuba, either directly or through rightwing Cuban-American proxies, and promised to respect the democratic will of the Cuban people themselves would have the moral legitimacy to call for democratic change in Cuba.

    As the Bush administration, further emboldened by its military victory in Iraq, threatens to wage "preemptive" wars around the globe we reaffirm our support for the right of self-determination in Cuba and our strong opposition to the U.S. policy of economic sanctions that has brought such suffering to the Cuban people.

    At the same time, we support democracy in Cuba. The imprisonment of people for attempting to exercise their rights of free expression is outrageous and unacceptable. We call on the Castro government to release all political prisoners and let the Cuban people speak, write and organize freely.

    That'll teach Fidel a lesson or two, won't it?

    I know this is getting tedious, but I thought maybe some of my readers would enjoy hearing what Dennis Perrin has to say about sports! (He is an expert, you know.... Wrote a book on the subject!)

    Here's what he has to say about white sports fans:

    "many white men...are transfixed by black flesh in motion. Dizziness occurs....Perhaps this is why, equilibrium returned, they despise black jocks in celebration."
    Hmmmmm.......

    I plead guilty to the crime of whiteness. But I'm not much of a sports fan. Is that because I'm don't "despise black jocks?" I have to admit, I've never been "transfixed" one way or another -- and as to the race of those who failed to "transfix" me? It never occurred to me! What am I missing? Should I try again?

    I'll have to run this one past some of my friends -- sports fans and otherwise.

    Here are more reflections from Perrin, on what makes American sports fans tick:

    elements like racism, religion, patriotism, and blood lust intertwine with the love of sport to produce phenomena like Texas high school football fanatics, Hoosier hysteria, and the Yankees' Bleacher Creatures
    I knew it! Sports fans are bloodthirsty, racist religious bigots! Not only that, they're (gulp) patriotic!

    I am sure there's a wealth of cool quotes from Chairman Perrin I've missed, but I have to stop somewhere. And because I love W.C. Fields, I'll end this by objecting to a remark he made reviewing The Bank Dick. Making a socialist out of poor W.C. Fields simply goes too far:

    Fields accurately nails the American tendency to inflate one’s importance, especially if money and fame are at stake.
    COME ON!

    Perrin is lucky the ferociously anti-tax, anti-New Deal Fields is not still alive:

    The great enemy in Fields' films is the busybody, the person who in the time-honored American puritan tradition tries to tell you how to live your life. It may be your boss, your wife, your mother-in-law, the snoopy neighbor, a temperance preacher, a policeman, or an agent of the federal government. But in each case, someone tells you what is good for you and it never turns out to be what you yourself want to do--whether it is drinking, smoking, or simply going to the wrestling matches in the afternoon. Fields evidently was struck by how much time and effort some people devote to interfering in other people's lives for no reason beyond the pleasure of exercising power over them.
    Sheesh! What do you suppose would Fields think of someone who tries to interpret his movies as representing a leftish triumphing of the class struggle -- almost 60 years after his death?

    posted by Eric at 08:53 AM | TrackBacks (0)




    Latest threat we cannot protect against!

    I feel compelled to speak up about two topics which are embarrassing and unpleasant for me: monkeys and underwear.

    For reasons I have explained before, I try to avoid monkeys whenever possible.

    And underwear? I am too much of a prude to touch the stuff -- male or female -- in my writing, anyway.

    But surely that doesn't mean I can just sit and ignore it when someone else raises this topic? Jennifer (whose link to Frank J. in the story somehow got his name all wrong; I can't imagine why) nonetheless performed a valuable service by linking to this story:

    Many women in SIngapore are buying their husbands special Chinese New Year briefs designed to bring them good fortune and increase their sexual potency as well as panties specially designed for the year of the monkey, which begins with the Lunar New Year on Jan. 22, a national holiday in Singapore and celebrated throughout the world by the Chinese diaspora.
    Whether they involve monkeys or not, such omens and portents will never be ignored. Not here at Classical Values!

    News of this growing threat will come as no surprise to the blogosphere's most outspoken leader against the monkey menace, Frank J., who recently said,

    So, I know what you are all asking: what's happening in monkey news? Well, the news is... IT'S NOW THE YEAR OF THE MONKEY!!!!

    AHHH!

    AHHH!

    AHHH!

    Stupid Chinese.

    I must disagree with Frank J. on the last small point. I don't think the Chinese are so stupid. What do you suppose they've been doing while we fight the War on Terror? Constant infiltration -- even to the point of subverting and perverting normal underwear!

    Think about it: a week from tomorrow, we will be officially in the Year of the Monkey! Call me an alarmist if you must, but I think that in light of stories like this it may be time to wake up and smell the coffee. It may be too late! That report came, of course, from Frank J. who has tirelessly sounded the alarm -- more times than anyone could possibly count -- while most people went about their daily business, blissfully unaware of the metastasizing threat. As Frank says,

    If we were really serious, we'd make eliminating monkeys part of our war on terror.
    Did you know that EIGHT PERCENT of all Americans were born in the Year of the Monkey?

    Watch out for people born in the following years: 1920, 1932, 1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004, 2016.

    (I hope that doesn't include anyone in the blogosphere, but I am getting scared!)

    Oh my God! Is the government going to allow these people to fly on planes?

    Isn't there at least a way to check their underwear?

    It's minimally invasive -- and as the saying goes, "if we could just save one life...."

    Or will the crackpots at the ACLU stop us from making even that small investment in the safety of our country?

    posted by Eric at 02:27 PM | TrackBacks (0)



    French libertarianism -- an oxymoron?

    80,000 people demonstrating for freedom -- and nothing in the Western press?

    Where did this take place?

    The Mideast?

    An oppressed Third World kleptocracy?

    Think again!

    The demonstration -- by libertarians protesting a near-total shutdown in services by government-unions -- was in France! (A government, by the way, which covers up its own wrongdoing while pushing for digital censorship. [Via InstaPundit.])

    Are the French almost as ready for freedom as the Iraqi people?

    Sabine Herold, Editor and spokeswoman for Liberté j'écris ton nom (Liberty, I Write Your Name), expected only 5000 to 10,000 people to show up at the big libertarian rally, and yet there were 80,000! The following are excerpts taken from Ms. Herold's interview in The Atlasphere:

    I think one of the problems in France is that libertarians are only focused on economic issues. That is not the most important thing. Of course, I think it's really important to be economically libertarian. But what is really the basis of a free society is the idea that people should be free to decide for themselves in any area — that means economically, but also in social issues, moral issues, or any issue. The economy is important but it's not the whole of it.

    Also, economics is something that is very boring for many people. I think if you want to touch many people, you should not speak in an economic way — you should tell them about values.

    ...

    [I]n France right now there's actually a political debate about whether civil servants should be paid depending on what they're doing and whether they're good or bad. Some people, especially the unions, are simply opposed to that; they think that when you're in public service, your level of productivity shouldn't be considered. To me that makes no sense. If a civil servant is not efficient, there's no reason to keep paying him. (Pause.) France is still a communist country.

    On US French relations:

    TA: You mentioned that perhaps some of the opposition to the war was based on anti-Americanism. Where do you think this anti-Americanism stems from?

    Herold: Well, I find it very weird, because America helped us twice in the two World Wars, and we have the same culture — the two of us are based on individual freedom and have the same values. So it's strange. Maybe it's because France would like to be more than it is now. It's really complicated. I think it's a kind of love-hate relationship.

    TA: I know some people accuse the United States of so-called "cultural imperialism," which basically means that France imports American movies and television shows and other products, and there's a worry that the French culture will change and be diluted and corrupted and so forth. What are your thoughts about that argument?

    Herold: I think no one is forced to eat at McDonalds or to go watch American movies. The people get what they want. Those very big Hollywood movies — every one the French people want to see. So they can do what they want. You can't force the people to go to see French films if they don't want to.

    If you're as surprised as I was, you should read the whole interview.

    Why is it that the major media in this country only tell us about the bad things in the world?

    If freedom is good enough for Iraq, why isn't it good enough for Chirac?

    posted by Eric at 10:11 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)




    Miraculous cure at last!

    If there's one thing I can't stand, it's having canker sores. (I've had 'em all my life, and they come and go without apparent reasons.) The medical term for these small mouth ulcers is aphthous stomatitis, and medical science not only cannot cure them, there aren't any treatments which can truly be called satisfactory. Hell, they don't even know what causes these buggers; stress, mouth trauma, heredity, autoimmune disorders, certain foods -- who knows?

    What started me on this latest adventure was reading about a possible connection between aphthous sores and inflammatory bowel syndrome. While I don't suffer from the latter condition, many years ago I noticed that tobacco and the opiates have in common the remarkable ability to slow the intestinal motility. So last summer, when a friend was suffering from a bout of inflammatory bowel syndrome (and didn't want to go to the doctor), I suggested that he try dipping some smokeless tobacco.

    It worked -- like a charm. I forgot all about that, but then recently, when I had a serious aphthous attack, I thought, "Hey, if this is related to IBS, and if tobacco works for IBS, then why not give it a try?"

    The problem is I am not a tobacco user, so I put off becoming my own guinea pig as long as I could stand it. One of the things I decided to do was check the Internet. I figured, who knows? Maybe some crank has tried it out and has something to say.

    I was amazed to find at least half a dozen solid medical references as well as published articles in scientific journals, all confirming my suspicion: indeed, tobacco both prevents and cures aphthous stomatitis!

    Here's a typical excerpt:

    APHTHOUS ULCERS AND FEVER BLISTERS. Recurring aphthous ulcers, or canker sores, are exquisitely painful and very common, affecting 10-20% of the general population and as much as 50% of health professionals. Rather than producing or inducing this ulcerative disorder, tobacco smoking seems to prevent its occurrence or diminish its effects. Aphthae frequently begin to appear or reappear in persons who stop smoking, and almost all (96%) affected individuals are nonsmokers. Canker sores are likewise less prevalent in smokeless tobacco users than in nonusers. The reasons for this "protection" are unclear, but may be related to an increased mucosal keratinization or a reduced immune attack against the bacterial antigens thought to trigger ulcer formation. (Emphasis in original.)
    For anyone who is seriously interesting in such things, this article outlines the inverse relationship between the development of aphthous ulcers and tobacco use, and cites a number of studies. And if you hate loading those damned PDF files and then having to search around, here is a link to an abstract summary you can actually read.

    Frankly, I was very surprised to read this. I had no idea that any reputable medical journal would print anything favorable about tobacco.

    (We wouldn't want the tobacco companies to find out about this, would we? Am I even allowed to write about this in my blog? Why, I thought tobacco was downright evil!)

    Oh, I almost forgot to report my results: I put up with a couple of days of one tobacco dose each evening (I used one Copenhagen SKOAL pouch for each "treatment" -- and spat them out when the giddiness would finally overcome me). I started with a huge sore, about the same size as the one in this picture. After just one day, it was noticeably better. Now, four days later, it's gone! Usually they take two weeks to go away.

    This is miraculous enough that I would recommend it as a treatment to any aphthous sufferer -- bearing in mind, of course, that this is a highly addictive drug. (I am not kidding about the latter being a serious risk.)

    PLEASE NOTE: This post was not paid for by any of the tobacco companies or their political lobbying organizations.

    posted by Eric at 10:35 PM | TrackBacks (0)



    Tie your tubes, and ride a bike!

    Clayton Cramer (a guy who probably wouldn't approve of two gay men holding hands in public) nonetheless has a good point when he cites these remarks about bigotry against "breeders" in the San Francisco Bay Area:

    [T]hey think I'm overpopulating the world. Probably the strangest experience I've had is being pregnant in the Bay Area. During my other pregnancies, I lived in Sacramento and was used to people smiling when they saw a pregnant woman. Here, no smiles -- mostly scowls.

    My favorite story is this one: When I was getting physical therapy when I was six months pregnant (after falling and breaking my wrist), the therapist asked me whether I was pregnant with my first child (she had already told me that she had one child and planned to have only one). When I said, no, this was actually my third child, she immediately asked me whether I was going to have my tubes tied after the birth.

    After my baby was born, the hostile looks and mutterings continued. While I was waiting in line for coffee one day with the kids in tow, one woman offered to me that she thought three children constituted a big family. When I told her it really isn't considered a large family in many other parts of the country, including the Midwest town I had recently moved from, she asked me with disdain, "Where was that, a religious community?" Then there was the woman who said to me as she pushed by my stroller, "Three? Don't you think you have enough?" It's not like I was asking her to contribute to their college fund! I was just taking my kids to the bathroom.

    From time to time, I have to bring one or more of my children with me to shop at the Bowl. (And let me just say that I am on the strict side of parenting -- my kids behave in public, or we leave.) People are less than happy to see kids in that market (the same is true at Market Hall in Rockridge).

    I can understand why -- both markets are crowded with people and products, making the navigation really tough. But, you know, even people who don't regularly get out to Oliveto's, Aqua or Roxanne's (because Bay Area baby-sitters charge $12-$15 an hour) like fresh cracked crab, a nice selection of domestic and imported cheeses and Artisan bread. Sometimes we just have to bring our wee ones along to buy the food we're eating.

    Part of the problem with some folks in the Bay Area is that they have lived here too long. They have no other experience with other towns, no diversity in their idea of community.

    A couple years ago, The Chronicle ran a series on neighborhoods in Berkeley. According to one longtime resident of the very white, very expensive Elmwood District, "We think of ourselves as being part of Berkeley and don't worry about our neighborhood being diverse." Wow, how nice for them. I guess Hispanic gardeners and African-American housekeepers provide that neighborhood's diversity. Meanwhile, they live in their million-dollar homes, drive expensive Volvos and walk on Oriental rugs that require insurance -- and they still get to call themselves liberals.

    This is outrageous, and while I lived in Berkeley for 30 years, I never experienced that kind of narrow-mindedness. (But then, I am not a woman, and I never had kids.) It makes me wonder whether there might be additional problems with the baby's (or the mother's) race or something. Would the same social intolerance be displayed towards, say, a black, Hispanic, or Asian mother? Do the rich Elmwood lefties scowl disapprovingly at the children of their Latina housekeepers or lecture the mothers? If not, why not?

    Not that there is anything new about condescending, elitist social prejudice against having too many children. I can remember from my childhood that mothers with one or two kids used to make deprecating remarks about other mothers who had "too many."

    But today, I guess any is too many.

    Such neo-Puritanism reminds me of another irritating, related phenomenon: a group called "Critical Mass" (more here) which believes that cars are bad, that all drivers are guilty of crimes against the environment, of war crimes, and (I guess as a logical extension) Bush is bad too! Here's a typical example of Critical Mass in action.

    I wouldn't want to be a right wing bicyclist!

    Here's some typical drivel from this (worldwide) movement:

    Bay Area Reclaim the Streets (RTS) is part of a global, decentralized direct action movement. Direct action means that, rather hoping and waiting for the powers that be to make the world all better, we personally set about the urgent task of reclaiming the streets (and the planet and our lives) from the destructive tyranny of global capitalism. The streets are the arteries of the capitalist system of exploitation and oppression, painful extensions of the military-industrial complex that is destroying the earth. By creating a zone of fun in the streets, we disrupt the normal functioning of that system, thereby opening a space for creative development (revolution). Stepping of the sidewalks and into the street brings us together, and allows us to challenge the dehumanization of our lives and the sterile world that accompanies it.
    Whew!

    And here they are, proudly blocking a fascist gas station!

    Just reading about this shit makes me mad enough to run out and buy what Critical Mass hates the most: an SUV. (Is "SUV" the antonym for "bicycle"?)

    I guess one of the reasons these folks so hate SUVs (here's a discussion of the relative virtues of "keying" versus "ticketing" them) is because they tend to be filled with kids.

    Cartoonist Ted Rall (of whom I am no fan) has also weighed in on SUVs:

    [T]he SUV craze is making Detroit more profitable than ever.

    That leaves consumers and dealers as the principal targets of radical environmentalists like the ELF. The idea is to make SUVs as unfashionable, and as scary to own, as fur became after the PETA-inspired spray-paint attacks of the '80s. In an ideal world, American consumers could be convinced to do the right thing through an appeal to logic with public service messages like the "What Would Jesus Drive?" TV campaign, but the kind of people who would buy a car that increases the risk to other motorists in an accident can't be reasoned with. They're selfish and stupid. It's unfortunate that drivers must worry that their SUVs are being targeted by insulting stickers and Molotov cocktails, but one thing's for sure: It couldn't be happening to a more deserving group of people.

    Fortunately, there is at least one organization devoted to countering Rall's repulsive ideas. (And if you ask me, all SUV owners should have the right to concealed carry in their vehicles -- just because they own an SUV!)

    The Culture War seems like a depressing, uphill battle sometimes. I keep complaining that lifestyles are being politicized, and while the focus of this blog has tended to be on the illogic of judging people by the content of their orgasms, now it's whether you have children. And whether you drive or ride.

    As William S. Burroughs used to say,

    Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has....

    posted by Eric at 04:07 PM | TrackBacks (0)



    This is not original!

    Every word you will read in this post (and almost every word in my entire blog) has been written before. Not one of these words was invented by me. But if I put words together in a certain order, then they can be said to be a "unique phrase" and if someone else uses it, they are supposed to give credit to me. (At least I think they are....)

    "Heh. Indeed." will serve as an easily recognized example in the blogosphere.

    This can arise in a variety of ways. My friend Justin Case noticed the other day that, deliberately or not, I used what some would consider Lenin's famous "unique phrase" "What is to be done?" in my remark about Christians behaving as Communists.

    Should I have credited Lenin? I thought this was cute, and that maybe some people would notice it, and maybe some wouldn't.

    To my mind, that insolence was what made it cute!

    It's the way I write, damn it, and if it's infringement, if it's plagiarism, then I guess I am a plagiarist! There is a chameleon aspect to my writing; I soak up philosophies and writing styles that I like, and I also soak up philosophies and writing styles that I hate! Then, when I start venting, it all just flows....

    How can one be a satirist without plagiarizing the culture that one satirizes?

    Several months ago, the proprietor of the dumbdumberdubya.com web site complained when I used the phrase "dumb, dumber, dubya" and asked where I had first seen it. I wasn't aware of having seen it anywhere (I sure as hell never visited his web site!), and I meant to satirize a certain mindset off the top of my head. From what I can see, the phrase was first used on the Internet on April 23, 2001, but I wonder whether or not that was the first. In all candor, I was unaware of ever having seen the phrase anywhere when I made fun of it.

    There can be such a thing as simultaneous invention. This happens frequently in patent law, because inventors often think along similar lines, and so the rule becomes one of "first to file." It wouldn't matter if I invented something last year; if you file now, you get the patent. "Publish or perish?" Who said that first? (I DON'T KNOW AND I DON'T CARE!)

    A few months ago, I jokingly accused the Washington Times of plagiarizing "my" phrase "Hurricane Hillary" -- because they used it a day after I had. But then I saw that it had appeared on the Internet over the years, dozens of times. Plus, there really was a "Hurricane Hillary" (not involving Hillary Clinton, apparently.)

    Do I really care?

    No.

    And that may be a problem.

    I refuse to spend my time worrying about phraseology to the point where I have to google every expression I might utter in case somewhere, someone else used the same words in that same order before!

    I would rather stop blogging now.

    But what is the rule? I like to think that if someone feels aggrieved by an allegedly borrowed expression or phrase, then he should point it out. I would certainly give credit. But I cannot spend all my time searching while I am writing to see whether someone said the same thing or had the same idea at some point in time. There are too many people, too many words, too many ideas, and more and more all the time.

    Worse yet, not everything makes it into the Internet. These ideas I have -- about everything to the fall of Rome and early Christianity, to homosexual marriage, masturbation, drug use, Howard Dean, popular culture -- they are my ideas but many, many people have thought about the same things and many people could have had identical ideas and possibly written them down. I can't help that -- and all I can do is state again that I try to keep this blog accurate and as fair as I can. If anyone thinks something I have written was written somewhere else, please tell me, and I will point that out.

    I'll even point it out LOUDLY!

    Not only doesn't it bother me at all, I am always delighted to see others thinking along similar lines.

    And if that isn't good enough, I guess I'll just have to pack my prophylactics with peanuts!

    Hope that wasn't plagiarism!


    (VERY OLD) UPDATE: Did Thomas Jefferson, by borrowing heavily from guys like Locke and Hume, commit plagiarism? Amazingly, I thought that was my own original question, but now I see that it has been asked before:

    "Jefferson's work clearly was not entirely original. In fact, similar ideas had been expressed by numerous natural law philosophers such as John Locke, David Hume, and Jean Jacques Rousseau." Hutchinson pointed out that the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is almost taken verbatim from a previous work of John Locke. "Our readers expect originality and not just recycled old matrerial," stated Hutchinson.

    Adding to the accusations was that, while Jefferson's column started off with "All men are created equal," Jefferson had circulated an earlier version to 56 of his friends (including Benjamin Franklin and John Adams) in which Jefferson himself admitted that the ideas in his column were "self-evident." Jefferson apologized for not stating that explicitly in the introduction to the column which he cut down for space. He offered to issue an admission that the ideas he had were not uniquely his but were self-evident and had been previously circulated by many other "natural law" philosophers.

    What a sleazy, cheating scumbag!

    The problem with my low standards is that I think the promotion of ideas is the important thing -- certainly more important than worrying about who had which idea first. I would not be annoyed if someone plagiarized stuff in my blog, because at least the ideas would be getting around, and I consider the ideas more important than my ego.

    Things are getting to the point where there's no such thing as an original idea! (And that's not an original idea.)

    Not that I ran out of original ideas -- but I hope readers will see my point.

    posted by Eric at 11:20 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)




    Truth, gun control and trolls....

    A few months ago, InstaPundit reported the story of a blogger who shot an armed burglar who broke into his house and made racist remarks.

    Trolls descended upon this poor guy, and the experience almost made him stop blogging.

    Well, S-Train, the blogger, is back, and he reports that the burglar (a man with a criminal record) is facing charges.

    Fascinating story, and I am glad to see evidence that it's on the level.

    When all is said and done, perhaps some of the trolls who stalked S-Train without knowing the facts will be ashamed of themselves for behaving that way.

    Anyway, read S-Train's account of the story. Start here and check the links.

    And while you're at it, take a look at the picture he's posted here. I think it's great!


    NOTE: Not all skeptics are trolls, and while I see nothing wrong with healthy skepticism, I like to wait until the facts are in.

    People tend to believe what they want to hear. I am a Life Member of the National Rifle Association, and I have long been acutely aware of the racist nature of gun control. Gun control proponents will do anything to discourage blacks (as well as gays, women and others) from arming themselves in self defense. Reports like S-Train's -- and this -- do much to counter the propaganda.

    Whether the story turned out to be true or not wouldn't have changed my position one iota. But I admit, in my heart I have wanted it to be true from the start.

    posted by Eric at 02:34 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)



    End it, don't amend it!

    Now that poor Friederich Hayek has been dragged -- over his own dead body -- into the gay marriage debate, I think it might be time to regroup, and ask a few basic questions.

    Perhaps it is time to think the unthinkable.

    Well, because the oppportunist in me knows that if I don't propose this someone else will, I wish to propose a new Constitutional Amendment.

    Ahem.

    The Federal Freedom From Marriage Amendment
    Marriage in the United States between any two (or more) persons is hereby abolished.

    Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to allow marital status or the legal incidents thereof to be conferred upon any individuals, couples, or groups.

    That's right! No more heterosexual marriages in the United States or any of its territorial possessions! Of course, homosexual marriages would also be prohibited -- but such is the price we must pay to be free from the terrible national scourge called "marriage."

    Truly, this is an idea whose time has come.

    Before you laugh, remember that half of all marriages end in failure, marriage (and its inevitable byproduct, divorce) costs trillions of dollars nationwide, pits the married against the unmarried in an awful class war, causes men and women and children to suffer from endless psychological and emotional problems, causes domestic violence, murder, suicide, child abuse, incalculable human tragedy, and untold numbers of wasted lives.

    Marriage is something this country can no longer afford.

    The price is too high.


    UPDATE: Michael Kinsley proposed privatizing marriage last summer, but why settle for half measures?

    posted by Eric at 01:20 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)



    Intuition running amok

    Now that the race is on, it's looking more and more to me as if the Democratic presidential candidate will be not Howard Dean, but Wesley Clark. Clark is coming up fast from behind, and if he does well in the Iowa caucuses (without having mounted a campaign there), this will be a sign that the voters are ready for him.

    What the polls say at this point is largely irrelevant. Wesley Clark can run on his ethos as a general, and continue making strong statements about how 9-11 never would have happened had he been president, and how he'll make sure something like that never happens again.

    What remains to be seen is who Clark's vice presidential candidate will be.

    The Clintons are backing him all the way, because of course, they fear Dean getting control of the party machinery and firing Terry McAuliffe. But what about General Clark as the anti-Hillary? If he manages to pull off a win, she's history unless she stages an insurgency movement in 2008. That's why I find myself wondering whether Clark is preordained to lose. A sort of sparring partner who'll beat up on George W. Bush -- not enough to win, but just enough to keep the Democrats alive, intact, and ready for Hillary's Big Moment.

    A guy like Clark might not be so easy to control -- unless the Clintons have him by the balls.


    (Who knows what may have been in those FBI files, or in the White House Data Base.....)

    UPDATE: I don't mean to be cynical, because I am really more of a Stoic than a Cynic. Although the word "cynic" (Latin cynicus, Greek kunikos) means dog-like! The Greeks believed in teaching certain dog-like qualities -- hence the "uncouth and aggressive manners adopted by the members of the [Cynic] school."

    Cool! Er, I guess I mean woof! I always liked South Park Republicans!

    And packs.

    posted by Eric at 11:34 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)



    The pathology and etiology of "Liberalism"

    .....according to Ann Coulter.

    This is from a Question and Answer interview at FrontPageMagazine:

    FP: Let's move on to discuss your own personal background. Tell us, what influenced you to become a Conservative? Were there some people or events that molded your views in your childhood, youth, etc?

    AC: There was an absence of the sort of trauma that would deprive me of normal, instinctual reactions to things. I had happily married parents, a warm and loving family, and a happy childhood with lots of friends. Thus, there were no neurotic incidents to turn me into a liberal.

    There you have it. Liberalism is not a choice!

    You learn something every day!

    posted by Eric at 09:25 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)




    Deal!

    This remark from an Islamic terrorist jailed in Italy says it all:

    They like life, I want to be a martyr....

    (Via InstaPundit.)

    Isn't it nice when we can find an area of common agreement with our enemies?

    A win-win deal!

    Let's make it happen!

    posted by Eric at 11:13 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)



    Dixie Pics

    A friend got a new puppy! She is a three-month-old, half Australian Shepherd, half Spaniel named Dixie.

    And yesterday, she came over to my place to play with Puff the Magic Pit Bull, aged fourteen.

    So, in the finest traditions of Rachel Lucas (as well as in the interest of keeping my readers fully informed about every possible facet of my life), I decided to upload some dog pictures to this blog.

    Might the real reason be that I am exhausted after these long-winded posts? If there are any serious people visiting this blog in the expectation of something serious, you have my apologies, and my promise to get serious again sometime in the near future. (Actually, I prefer satire to some of the stuff I have been compelled to write lately.)

    The first thing Dixie did was make a careful assessment of the situation:

    DixiePlots.jpg

    She concluded that Puff was a total pushover who would never dare harm a little puppy -- no matter what it did. Here he is, trying to run away!

    DixieStalks.jpg

    It then occurred to Dixie that the strange man holding the camera was either a pushover, or a paparazzi of some sort, so she charged!

    PaparazziCharge.jpg

    I was not about to have my creativity stifled, so I bravely held my ground. Dixie continued her charge, and leaped into my lap! (That'll teach me!)

    Dixie then decided to take a series of flying leaps, slamming into Puff after working up a full head of steam. Here is one awkward picture of an Amazing, Death-Defying, Full-Force, Sideways Dixie Body Slam! (Bear in mind that the puppy attention span does not allow for anything like a pose for a camera shot, and my digital camera has an annoying three second delay -- so I was lucky to catch anything at all....)

    DixieTackles.jpg

    And here is Puff, the courageous Pit Bull, trying his best to get away from the relentless pounding, slamming, and biting.

    DixieAttack.jpg


    A good time was had by all!

    posted by Eric at 09:08 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)



    Heretics threaten our entrenched utopia!

    An online test I found recently served as a reminder of the horrors of Communism, highlighting as it did the primary role of Vladimir Lenin in paving the way for the vast slaughters of Stalin and Mao.

    For the many years when the slaughter was ongoing, people who should have known better lived in a state of denial, either looking the other way, or flat-out refusing to believe the obvious. (Or, in the case of some, like Walter Duranty, actively enabling the atrocities by authoritative lying in respectable journals.) But even after Stalin's crimes were exposed, many leftists and sympathetic intellectuals, while conceding Stalin's crimes (sometimes called "mistakes"), nonetheless clung tenaciously to the delusion that Lenin was an altogether different sort of guy. That "if only Lenin had known" what was coming and been able to prevent it, things would somehow have been different.

    It is of course, beyond any dispute that the difference between Lenin and Stalin was not really in the moral sense; both made use of murder, torture, and terror. Stalin vastly increased the number of people killed, and he made sure that everyone now lived under terror -- not even excepting Communists.

    Yet there remains a hesitancy to condemn Lenin, for it is believed that to condemn Lenin comes pretty close to condemning Communism.

    As a pure theory, Communism has never killed anyone. Only when it is applied do people die.

    Doctrines and ideologies are always that way. No one has ever been killed by a mere idea.

    The same can be said about religion. Ideas about God or gods, even writings said to be direct orders from God, do not kill anyone. It is when men put them into practice that people die.

    I have a serious problem with anyone, anywhere, under any circumstances, being killed in furtherance of an idea, an opinion, or a belief.

    Yet all too often doctrines are arrived at by killing. People who dissent or disagree are killed for their disagreement, or for their resistance to the "doctrine." There is something so odious, so completely immoral, about killing people to win an argument that I sometimes wonder whether the positions taken by those who prevailed by murder and torture shouldn't be declared inherently immoral. Islam, which believes in killing people, derives power from the killing that has been done in the name of "Allah" and thus the "doctrine" -- blood-soaked as it is -- becomes more powerful the more people are killed.

    Doctrines which are a product of murder, torture, and killing are, to my mind, not the products of free thought, and I believe they should at the very least be subjected to the strictest possible scrutiny.

    Does that include Christianity? To the extent to which the doctrines of this otherwise gentle, genuinely peaceful religion were achieved by killing, I would say yes. Resoundingly.

    That is all the more compelling because if killing can be done in the name of Christianity (of all possible ideas or religions), if people can be compelled to accept Christian doctrines because of murder, then Christianity would not be the religion of hope it claims to be. Man would be the worse off for it. Christians have a higher moral duty than Communists or Muslims to see to it that excesses in the name of Christianity be addressed.

    Most of the time, people who examine the excesses of Christianity focus on such things as the Inquisition or the Crusades. This strikes me as similar to leftist intellectuals who are willing to admit to Stalinist excesses but want to leave it there.

    My research has convinced me that the road to the Inquisition was paved by the early Roman Christians. They tortured and killed "heretics," "witches," Jews, and homosexuals. They invented a doctrine of Christian intolerance without which the Inquisition would never have been possible. They are to Christianity as Lenin was to Communism.

    The analogy ends there, of course, because there is no moral equivalency between Christianity and Communism. Certainly not in theory.

    That's because Communists are supposed to kill people for their beliefs, and Christians are not. If anything, Christians are supposed to do the opposite. So, not only is there no moral equivalency in theory, there should be no analogy in practice.

    That is what makes this comparison particularly distasteful for me to make.

    But the fact remains that in light of early Christian history, the Inquisition and the Crusades cannot be said to be moral aberrations. Constantine, Athanasius, Tertullian, Theodosius, and countless others, laid the road which inexorably led to Torquemada.

    I don't know how the numbers compare, and I have to hope that the Communists killed more people. But it isn't about numbers. And when two competent and reputable historians make statements like these, people should take notice:

    Probably more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in two years [A.D. 342-343, during the Arian controversy] than by all the persecutions of Christians under the Romans during the previous three hundred years.
    - Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, Vol. 4, The Age of Faith
    In the century opened by the Peace of the Church [after the first Christian Roman Emperor began his rule], more Christians died for their faith at the hands of fellow Christians than had died before in all the persecutions.
    - Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
    To the extent that religious doctrines were the product of murder, torture, and tyranny, such doctrines are blood-soaked, and should be regarded with suspicion. Honest thinking does not require the killing of people in order to prevail.

    If you have to kill someone to win an argument, that does not make your argument right. That people were killed in order to "settle" an argument does not render the conclusion right.

    In my view, it makes those who champion the winning position suspect -- particularly if their argument is based on the "conservative" idea that settled and older ideas are superior, that passage of time legitimizes brutal methods of coercion.

    Ideas and doctrines are not rendered morally superior by application of force. You'd think Christians would have already known that, but history shows the folly of that assumption.

    With the above in mind, I want to return to my discussion of logic, and epistemic conservatism:

    Epistemic conservatism dictates that belief in the existence of evil be abandoned before belief in the existence of God, for it is less entrenched.
    Ideas and beliefs can become entrenched in a variety of ways, including the use of lethal force. The Trinity alone supplies a perfect example:
    The origins of the Trinity doctrine are appalling. Like most historic issues pertaining to Christianity, there was much deceit and bloodshed. Many lives were lost before 'Trinitarianism' was finally adopted.

    As many Christians know, the word "trinity" does not appear in the Bible. It doesn't because it is a doctrine which evolved in early Christianity. It was a manipulated, bloody and deadly process before it finally arrived as an 'accepted' doctrine of the church.

    Eventually, there will come a point in the life of any tyrannical system where the murderers and torturers are sufficiently satisfied (perhaps exhausted) that their position has prevailed that they'll loosen up a bit. Perhaps even get soft in their old age. Or die. Or run out of dissenters to kill.

    I do not doubt that even the Nazi regime, had it been allowed to live on and "mellow" with age, would have grown more liberal and less murderous. With no more Jews to kill, it would increasingly have been argued that the Jewish position was defeated. Some "liberals" might have even come along and argued that the Jews weren't so bad after all. At this point, would epistemic conservatives be heard to say that the question had been settled long ago, and it was part of an entrenched idea that the Jews had been bad (and therefore lost)?

    Years ago, I attended a large dinner to honor elderly Communists. There were people in their eighties and nineties who proudly recalled things like the Palmer Raids, and John Reed. A huge banner across one side of the room proclaimed, "IT'S A GRAND OLD STRUGGLE!" While it is true that Communism did not prevail, suppose it had. Would the fact of its "entrenchment" make supporting it a duty of epistemic conservatives?

    Example:

    In our standard agreed-upon history of the 20th century, communism still stands morally above fascism, even though communism lasted much longer and killed many more.
    Forgive me, but wouldn't the fact that Communism "lasted longer and killed many more" be an argument in its favor under the epistemic conservative theory of entrenchment?

    Or is Communism too "new" to be considered "entrenched"? (Karl Marx published The Communist Manifesto in 1848, and died in 1883. And Walter Duranty has been dead for a long time....) If Communism is too new, then how far are we to back up? How are epistemic conservatives to handle Christianity versus Islam? One is older, but the other is more entrenched. Paganism is older than either one, and its vestiges in culture are more entrenched than any religion offered since.

    I still can't shake the conviction that if people have to be killed to establish ideas, those ideas are rendered suspect -- even if the ideas were intended to create an earthly or heavenly utopia.

    Even assuming for the sake of argument that the utopians are right and the heretics are wrong, without the heretics, how could there be freedom?

    What sort of utopia is that?


    Hell itself might seem preferable:

    The Indian chief Hatuey fled with his people but was captured and burned alive. As "they were tying him to the stake a Franciscan friar urged him to take Jesus to his heart so that his soul might go to heaven, rather than descend into hell. Hatuey replied that if heaven was where the Christians went, he would rather go to hell."


    UPDATE: Steven Malcolm Anderson mentioned the death of Hypatia in the comments below, and I think readers would do well to read this account of the horrible death of this enlightened and cultured woman -- at the hands of a Christian "saint" in AD 400. The death of Hypatia has been called "the death of the classical world." Similarly, the Communists are said to have demonstrated their true nature by executing the Czar and his family. Why is the latter generally disavowed as wrong, but not the former?

    Entrenchment?

    Once again, I hope readers will realize that I am NOT saying that there is a moral equivalency between Communism and Christianity! Read this account for an idea of what happened in our lifetimes to countless millions of people. I share Dean Esmay's assessment of Communism.

    Christianity, however, is supposed to adhere to a much higher standard. So, what is to be done when Christians behave like Communists?


    UPDATE: For me, rationalizations like this just don't cut it:

    We are killing to build a world in which no one will ever kill. We accept criminality for ourselves in order that the earth may at last be full of innocent people.
    How naive evil can be made to sound!

    posted by Eric at 02:40 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)



    Can't win with 'em; can't win without 'em!

    Ah, the paradoxes of politics!

    The most interesting recent example is this: the disgruntled right wing of the Republican Party, still smarting over the Schwarzenegger victory, want to show their strength lest anyone forget it. They are supporting right-wing challenger Pat Toomey in his bid to unseat fourth-term Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter in the Republican primary.

    Despite nearly $10 million in campaign funds, an endorsement from President Bush, and a double-digit lead in the polls, Specter faces a bona fide primary challenge from U.S. Rep. Pat Toomey, a Lehigh Valley conservative whose candidacy has become a rallying cry for the party's right flank.

    The April 27 primary has attracted national attention for the way it crystallizes the party's underlying power struggle between its moderate and conservative wings.

    "This campaign will be read as to what extent the conservatives have gained power in the party," said Mike Young, a former Pennsylvania State University professor who now works as a polling consultant.

    Can they do it? Of course they can. Arnold Schwarzenegger could never have won the Republican primary election because of them. They are a loud, angry minority, and they tend to vote in a bloc.

    The problem is, if they get their way and Toomey beats Specter in the primary, moderate Democrat U.S. Rep. Joseph M. Hoeffel, described as "rested and well-funded, because he will be unopposed in the Democratic primary" will win the general election!

    Were I a Democrat, I'd send as much money as I could to Toomey. Who knows; with any luck, he might even hurt Bush in Pennsylvania!

    NOTE: Please bear in mind that the above is a political opinion, and has nothing to do with my personal preferences, if any. For all I know, Toomey is more in line with my way of thinking than Specter. That's irrelevant to political reality.


    UPDATE: The Toomey campaign is being heavily bankrolled by the Club for Growth -- a group whose latest antics are highlighted by John Perry Barlow, who fears it is pushing the country into

    a purely idiotic professional wrestling match between gay atheist Harvard professors and some good ol' refugees from "Deliverance"
    I agree with Barlow that this is not a good thing -- for the country, the blogosphere, or for rational human thought.

    Now that I think about it, the Club for Growth (which I once naively believed to be a libertarian outfit) purged a gay man from its leadership ranks in September -- apparently bowing to demands by religious conservatives. While I have little sympathy for people who run around hurling accusations of "homophobia" (a word I do not like), worrying about people's sexual preferences hardly strikes me as "libertarian."

    posted by Eric at 02:10 PM | TrackBacks (0)




    A barbarian victory?

    Did the early Christian war against "heresy" help trigger the Dark Ages? Might a little bit of Christian tolerance have even kept ancient Roman culture alive?

    These questions are still much on my mind, and while I can't provide answers or lay things to rest, my wildest fantasy is that maybe one or more people who know more than I do will be stimulated intellectually to do some serious, original historical research.

    Please, anyone, if you like any of this, take the ball and run with it!

    In the early days of this blog, I discussed the Emperor Justinian and Christendom's first sodomy laws, and I pointed out that they did little more than accompany the beginning of the Dark Ages. While I never argued that the sodomy laws themselves led to the Dark Ages, I had not fully explored the role of Justinian.

    By getting me started on Ostrogoth history, this marvelous post by Michael McNeil provided the catalyst for another attempt to revisit the Fall of Rome, and the birth of the Dark Ages.

    I am delighted to quote Michael McNeil as a starting point:

    The Ostrogoths, after first being settled by the East Roman Empire in what used to be called Yugoslavia, towards the end of the 5th century were induced by the East Roman Emperor to invade Italy, ruled by the barbarian king Odoacer, who had lately put an end to the remains of the Roman Empire in the West. The Ostrogoths, under their king Theodoric the Great, defeated Odoacer, and in 493 Theodoric became king of the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy. For most of the next half century Ostrogothic Italy remained relatively prosperous and enlightened amid the darkness taking hold elsewhere. Roman civilization had not yet winked out in Italy; literary works continued to be written in Latin, and Theodoric maintained a benevolent rule over both Italians and Ostrogoths.

    This state of affairs, after the death of Theodoric, was brought to an end by the Eastern Emperor Justinian, who in 535 launched an invasion of Ostrogothic Italy in order to retrieve it for the Roman Empire, commanded by the brilliant general Belisarius, who had just lately reconquered Vandal Africa for the Byzantine domain. Justinian, however, was paranoid and suspicious of Belisarius, and failed to provide him with enough troops, whereupon the war dragged on literally for decades, devastating most of Italy and doing much to propel it into the Dark Ages.

    I am no expert on these matters, and like most of my readers I grew up thinking about the common Ostrogoth stereotype. Usually, when we think of the Ostrogoths, we think of bad people -- barbarians who sacked Rome.

    Hardly the sort of people who might attempt to preserve Roman culture.

    Yet that was precisely what they did. (Or rather, what they attempted to do.)

    The Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths) originally migrated from southern Scandinavia and had settled the Ukraine, eventually being pushed out by the Huns. They came to Italy and, through a series of events (which you can read about in detail here), ended up establishing their capitol in Ravenna, where -- thanks to the efforts of the Goths -- there was a remarkable period which has been called the "first Renaissance" in which original Roman culture was revived, kept alive, and even flourished.

    Until Justinian, the Eastern Emperor, deposed the enlightened Ostrogoths over a theological dispute. Instead of reuniting the Roman Empire, this created a power vacuum, leading directly to the invasion of the Lombards -- and total destruction of Western Roman culture.

    Tragedy. Real tragedy.

    It was an eye-opener for me to realize that what I was taught -- that the "good" Justinian overthrew the "bad" Ostrogoths -- was, simply, wrong.

    I can't set history straight. But I think it bears close examination, possibly reappraisal. A task of this sort is really beyond the scope of my blog.

    But I'll do what I can in this. (Pathetically insufficient though that may be.)

    What sort of people were the Ostrogoths?

    To get a feel for Ostrogoth culture, let's start with a brief glimpse at their language. Here's the Lord's Prayer

    Atta unsar thu in himinam,
    weihnai namo thein,
    quimai thiudinassus theins,
    wairthai wilja theins,
    swe in himina jah ana airthai.
    hlaif unsarana thana sinteinan gib uns himma daga,
    jah aflet uns thatei skulans sijaima,
    swaswe jah weis afletam thaim skulam unsaraim,
    jah ni briggais uns in fraistubnjai,
    ak lausei uns af thamma ubilin;
    unte theina ist thiudangardi
    jah mahts jah wulthus in aiwins.
    Amen.
    Here are a couple of examples of mosaics which flourished under their rule:

    Theodoric, the greatest leader the Ostrogoths produced, was as enlightened a man as it was possible to be given his times.

    Here's the only picture I could find of him -- on the face of a coin.

    Here's his tomb, which he designed. (That's real Gothic architecture, folks!) (Another view and description.)

    And here's his widow Amalaswintha, a valiant woman who struggled on

    against the restive aristocracy. It finally had its way and she was stabbed in her bathtub.

    Here is an Ostrogoth mosaic picture of the palace of Theodoric in Ravenna -- from the basilica of St Apollinare Nuovo (c. AD 500-520). After Justinian's overthrow of the Ostrogoths, the mosaic was defaced -- and figures of Theoderic and his court removed.

    Here are some post-capture mosaics of Justinian and his wife Theodora, shown with their entourages.

    For those interested in more Ravenna stuff, here are some beautiful web sites.

    For reasons which I suspect involve religion, Justinian seems to have been largely given a pass by historians:

    Justinian the First, whose murderous and determined onslaught on the West destroyed the two strongest Germanic successor states, Vandals and Ostrogoths, and, more worryingly for the British authorities, seized the gateway to the Atlantic from the Visigoths.

    There has been, and there still is, a tendency to whitewash Justinian, the emperor responsible for these wars: one of history's monsters, the Hitler, the Stalin, the Pol Pot of his time.

    Justinian's religiously motivated laws were harsh and intolerant, and in my opinion, did much to embark early Christianity on a collision course with personal freedom, of a distinctly totalitarian anti-sexual, and anti-Semitic character:
    Justinian's legislation dealt with almost every aspect of the Christian life: entrance into it by conversion and Baptism; administration of the sacraments that marked its several stages; proper conduct of the laity to avoid the wrath God would surely visit upon a sinful people; finally, the standards to be followed by those who lived the particularly holy life of the secular or monastic clergy. Pagans were ordered to attend church and accept Baptism, while a purge thinned their ranks in Constantinople, and masses of them were converted by missionaries in Asia Minor. Only the orthodox wife might enjoy the privileges of her dowry; Jews and Samaritans were denied, in addition to other civil disabilities, the privilege of testamentary inheritance unless they converted. A woman who worked as an actress might better serve God were she to forswear any oath she had taken, even though before God, to remain in that immoral profession. Blasphemy and sacrilege were forbidden, lest famine, earthquake, and pestilence punish the Christian society. Surely God would take vengeance upon Constantinople, as he had upon Sodom and Gomorrah, should the homosexual persist in his "unnatural" ways.
    To back up a bit, why would the last heirs of the original Roman culture take refuge in Ravenna? Simply put, the core group of Romans who carried with them Rome's cultural traditions had to flee somewhere, and there was safety in the swamps:
    For a time after the year 404, Ravenna and not Rome was the capital of the Roman Empire in the West. After the extinction of the western empire, Ravenna was the seat of government of Theodoric the Ostrogoth, the court visited by Boethius. Later Ravenna was the capital of a part of Italy ruled by the Byzantines.

    The islands of the lagoons provided an invulnerable refuge, comparable to Switzerland during World War II, for Roman aristocrats and others fleeing the paths of Goth, Hun, and Langobard armies. Already between 300 and 400 A.D. there are traces of families whose names will later become infamous: Candiano, Faliero, Dandolo. Legend has it that the big influx of refugees came during the raids of Attila the Hun in 452 A.D. Various areas of the lagoons were colonized, including the present site of Torcello, before the seat of administration was fixed at a group of islands known as Rivus Altus ("the highest bank"), later the Rialto, the present location of the city of Venice. The official Ab Urbe Condita is March 25, 721 A.D. Paoluccio Anafesto, the first ruler of the lagoon communities, called the doge (the Venetian equivalent of Latin dux or Florentine duca/duce, meaning leader or duke), is said to have been elected in the year 697.

    The most significant fact of this entire period is that the whelp of what was later to become Venice survived and grew thanks to its close alliance with the evil Emperor Justinian in Constantinople, an alliance that was underlined in later years by intermarriage of doge and other leading Venetian oligarchs with the nobility of Byzantium, where a faction embodying the sinister traditions of the Roman Senate lived on for a thousand years after the fall of Rome in 476.

    Anyone who has visited Venice can understand the romance, the hidden allure, of edifices of incomparable artistic beauty built on swampland and water. It has always struck me as poignant and tragic that they had to flee there in a vain attempt to keep Rome's cultural traditions alive.

    And now it strikes me as supremely ironic that they had more to fear from a religious argument than from barbarians. The trouble came from the more dogmatic Eastern Empire.

    "Civilized" does not mean tolerant.

    While it is undeniable that early Christians in Italy had sown the seeds of anti-sexual intolerance, it was under Justinian that the true medieval attitudes were forged. Ultimately they took the form of rigid laws persisting in the West right up until the early 21st Century.

    I hope readers will forgive my apparent focus on homosexuality, but for whatever reason, this has become a central, driving, highly contentious issue among Christians -- right here in modern America -- and it has by no means been laid to rest. In view of its apparently grave importance, whether I like dealing with it or not I must deal with it.

    And whether I like it or not, this stuff is a central focus of my blog. If I ignore it, I might as well stop blogging.

    The first laws in the West dealing with male homosexuality (lesbianism being largely ignored) focused on male prostitution, and were promulgated in 390 AD by the Emperor Theodosius when he was under order of excommunication and under the equivalent of house arrest.

    390 AD:

    DURING THIS PERIOD, THE FIRST PUBLIC BURNING OF MALE PROSTITUTES HAPPENED. UNDER THE EMPEROR THEODOSIUS MALE PROSTITUTES WERE DRAGGED FROM THE BROTHELS AND BURNED ALIVE. This date might provide a good starting point for the history of state persecution of heresy - while not at all formed as such, it might provide a good root source for the beginnings of this trend.

    Simultaneously, all pagan practices were outlawed.

    Like paganism, prostitution had been a Roman tradition for many years:

    Since the Roman Republic, according to Tacitus (Ann. II.85.1-2), male and female prostitutes had been recorded nominally in registers which were kept under the guardianship of the aediles. From the reign of Caligula, prostitutes were taxed (Suet. Cal. 40).

    Christianity's condemnation of any type of non-procreative sexual intercourse brought about the outlawing of homosexuality in the Western Empire in the third century and consequently of male prostitution. In 390, an edict of Emperor Theodosius I threatened with the death penalty the forcing or selling of males into prostitution (C.Th. 9.7.6). Behind this edict lay not a disgust of prostitution, but the fact that the body of a man would be used in homosexual intercourse in the same way as that of a woman. And that was unacceptable, for had St Augustine not stated that 'the body of a man is as superior to that of a woman, as the soul is to the body' (De Mend. 7.10)?

    In application of Theodosius' edict in Rome, the prostitutes were dragged out of the male brothels and burnt alive under the eyes of a cheering mob. Nevertheless, male prostitution remained legal in the pars orientalis of the empire. From the reign of Constantine I, an imperial tax was levied on homosexual prostitution, this constituting a legal safeguard for those who could therefore engage in it 'with impunity'. Evagrius emphasises in his Ecclesiastical History (3.39-41) that no emperor ever omitted to collect this tax. Its suppression at the beginning of the sixth century removed imperial protection from homosexual prostitution. In 533, Justinian placed all homosexual relations under the same category as adultery and subjected both to death (Inst. 4.18.4).

    An especially emotional history of this period can be found here. (Bear in mind that it seems to have been written by gay activists, who may or may not be professional historians....)

    Justinian's intolerance, though, extended much further than homosexuals or pagans. The invasion of Italy by Justinian was at its core motivated by a religious disagreement: the Ostrogoths were Arians. That is, they worshiped Jesus as the son of God, but did not believe he had existed forever before he was born. They rejected the Trinity.

    I have blogged about this before, but I believe the doctrine of the Trinity is an anachronistic vestige of anti-pagan paranoia.

    Such paranoia included rewriting Ostrogoth history -- and censorship:

    This effacing done by the Catholics with the aim of cancelling every reference to the period of Gothic domination, was part of a general concern to reinforce the concepts of catholic orthodoxy: at the head of the line of saints, in fact, St. Martin stands out as the proud antagonist of Arianism, whilst the procession of the Virgins is led by Saint Euphemia, the strenuous upholder of the ideas of the Council of Chalcedonia (451), in which the duplex nature of Christ was re-affirmed. The trinitarian dogma, understood in its anti-Arian significance, is also made evident in the figures of the Magi adoring Christ as God.
    At this point, it seems only fair to ask some basic questions about the so-called "Trinity." After all, it is increasingly clear that it has very little to do with Jesus himself, or Judaism, and more to do with countering the widespread paganism (polytheism) of the soon-to-be-totally-extirpated culture of the ancients. The latter, known to use logic, often sneered at the idea that Christianity was "monotheist" -- for if "God" was seen to have a son, well? Where there's one, might not there be more? A god who reproduces himself seems anything but "monotheist."

    In previous essays, I have pointed out the basic logical contradiction between the Trinity and Judaism (for the Messiah is a normally-born man, and if Jesus was the Messiah then he was a man). For examples, see these two sites -- which believe passionately that Jesus is the Messiah and condemn the virgin birth as another artifice manufactured to win over pagans and further enshrine the Trinity. In the process, ordinary logic was lost. Crazy as it sounds, in order to make sure that no one could call them pagan, the early Christian theologians laid down the doctrine that there was no period before Jesus Christ -- that he had always existed! (Otherwise, of course, pagans might have said that a deity had been "added" and that Christianity was not monotheist!)

    Isaac Newton did not believe in the Trinity.

    Nor did Thomas Jefferson.

    Muslims, of course, have no such worries. To them Jesus and Muhammad are simply prophets. No lurking "pagan threat" there.

    But once again, I must ask, what is the problem with polytheism? In light of the silly Trinity (itself denounced as "Pagan"), hasn't it ever occurred to anyone that the conflict between monotheism and polytheism is itself silly? That maybe God (if you want God to be one) could appear in as many forms, in as many places, to as many people, as he might desire?

    Why the need to control?

    Ironically, the warfare between "East" and "West" occurred almost a thousand years before the formal schism separated Catholicism from Orthodoxy. There was no "Orthodox" versus "Catholic" church in the time of Justinian and Theodoric. Instead, there was an unending campaign to stamp out "heresy." Christian against Christian. Yet under the enlightened rule of the Ostrogoths, Arian heretics and conventional Catholics had gotten along. Obviously, Justinian found such religious pluralism intolerable, so he had to destroy the Ostrogoths.

    The "East" ended up conquering the "West."

    At this point some readers might be asking, "Where the hell was the Pope?" Bear in mind that the papacy had little power when Justinian's war against "heresy" was going on. Both Theodoric and Justinian treated the popes (in truth, the Bishop of Rome) as little more than political pawns, replaceable almost at will:

    John I who was born in Populania, Italy and elected on August 13, 523. He would die three years later. During this time he crowned the Emperor Justinian in Constantinople. The latter could not help the Pope when the barbaric King Theodoric invaded Italy and imprisoned John where he died in a cell in Ravenna on May 18, 526.

    Pope Saint Felix IV followed John on July 12, 526 for four years. Felix was arbitrarily nominated Pope by Theodoric for the kings own devious ends and to win the people over. Felix showed so much loyalty to the good of Holy Mother Church that it incensed Theodoric and the Goth king eventually repudiated Felix, exiling him. Upon his death on September 22, 530 the Liberty of cult was restored to the Christians.

    On the day of Felix' death Pope Saint Boniface II became the 55th successor of Peter. His papacy would last only two years. Unlike his predecessors, Boniface was of Gothic origin and many refered to him as the "barbarian pope" though he was in no way barbaric and permitted Benedict to build the monastery of Monte Cassino on the old temple of Apollo. Because of his ethnic origins a rival faction caused problems by electing an antipope in Dioscoros but any struggle or major problems ceased when the antipope died before Boniface did on October 17, 532.

    Sandwiching Felix was the other John, Pope Saint John II who was elected on January 2, 533 after a three month hiatus due to squabbles over which faction was to hold court. Felix' followers won out and a man named Mercurius was elected. He became the first to change his name because his name represented a pagan god, therefore he began a tradition of choosing a papal name that exists to this day. Through an edict of Atalaric, the Sovereign Pontiff was recognized as the head of all bishops world wide.

    Following him was Pope Saint Agapitus who ruled just under a year. This Roman-born priest was elected on May 13, 535 and died on April 22, 536. He was enticed by Theodoric to travel to Constantinople to basically spy on Justinian in discovering the latter's plans for Italy. But Agapitus went there for the people and to try to convert Justinian's wife Theodora back to Catholicism from the eutichian faith. Sadly she rebelled and poisoned Agapitus in Constantinople.

    This, we find, was condoned by Justinian and prompted his sending his Byzantine armies, under the command of Belisarius to capture Rome with the Pope dead. "

    None of these people were heroes. However, to see the Ostrogoths as destructive barbarian invaders and Justinian as a good guy savior is to commit a major historical error.

    Justinian's actions resulted in the destruction what was left of the Romans and their culture, and did much to construct a monolith of Christian intolerance -- despite the fact that this should have seemed oxymoronic. In my opinion, Justinian did more than any single man to plunge Europe into the Dark Ages.

    Hardly something to be nostalgic about.


    UPDATE: A brief conversation with Justin Case made it apparent that the virgin birth raised as many questions as it might have appeared to "settle." Was the immaculately conceived embryo of Mary's genetic material, or God's? Or both? If the genetic material was Mary's, was the conception what scientists today call parthenogenesis? If so, then that would have to mean that Mary was not an XX woman, but one of the one in 5 million XY women. Did the embryo consist entirely of God's DNA? Are these questions considered "heretical"? If so, why?

    UPDATE: Donald Sensing, a leading Christian blogger of impeccable credentials, does not consider this question heretical, nor essential to salvation in the Christian sense. Calling the virgin birth "a vexing topic" and "one of the tenets of Christian fundamentalism," Reverend Sensing concluded that:

    Affirming the virgin birth does not get us into heaven and denying it does not keep us out.

    posted by Eric at 04:02 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)



    A cold day in Blog Hell....

    Ridiculous!

    It's two degrees here, I cannot run, and I cannot get online through normal means. So damned cold the DSL connection is down.

    So, I must resort to moblogging.....

    I am working on another long post with lots of links, and the one problem with moblogging is the link inefficiency issue. I cannot open two browsers, nor can I select and paste text.

    Patience, please.

    I am not flaking.

    Just freezing!

    posted by Eric at 11:39 AM | TrackBacks (0)



    Solitary nocturnal blogging....

    All day researching, with nothing to show for my efforts. This can be very time-consuming.

    For reasons not entirely clear to me, the very psychic Justin Case reminded me of the distinction between packs, herds and hives.

    The coatimundi (Nasua narica) and the raccoon (Procyon lotor) belong to the same family, the Procyonidae. There are many similarities, in size, in coloration, and in diet. Yet the coatimundi makes a good pet and the raccoon does not.

    The reason is because the raccoon is a solitary, nocturnal animal, and the coatimundi is a very social, diurnal animal -- living in bands of up to 20 or even 30 or more.

    Now for some quasi-anthropomorphic blathering. As a social loner, I tend to like packs. Herds and hives are fine in theory, but I don't like the aimless following which characterizes a herd, nor do I like the hive idea of mechanized, replaceable workers or drones. Neither mindless cowardice nor mindless bravery, nor lynch mob hysteria, nor waving little red books in the air because everyone else does appeals to me.

    Appearances, though, are for yourself as well as for others -- and that's one of blogging's many paradoxes.


    UPDATE: Oh, in the interests of fairness, I guess I should point out that I prefer coatimundis to raccoons.

    posted by Eric at 12:52 AM | TrackBacks (0)




    Un-hip punishment for a very sore king!

    Mixed results on this weird Friday (Online Testing Day at Classical Values) -- one of which is the punishment I was promised for cheating in a previous test.

    First, through Michael Demmons I found the "What Famous Leader Are You?" test.

    I turned out to be John F. Kennedy:

    But I'm not sure about that description. True, I enjoy taking risks, but liking power because it increases my sexual options?

    I hate power!

    And what sexual options are they talking about? Where are they?

    Obviously, more tests are in order.




    Think Kennedy and think Camelot, kings, castles, right? I took the "What is your tarot significator?" test and I turned out to be the King of Swords.



    FIRE OF AIR. Serious and intellectual, you live in the world of thoughts and ideas. You grasp things quicker than most and are a master debater. Your verbal skills are unparalleled; your conversations are stimulating. You are concerned with issues of justice. Your standards are high, so there is danger of becoming too moralistic. While truth is generally an honorable thing, chew on this: "Why Yes Herr Strudel, my neighbor IS hiding Jews in his basement!" You're Christopher Walken in Suicide Kings.
    Quiz
    created by Polly Snodgrass.


    Fair enough I guess. But the test supplies only a superficial description of the meaning of this card. The totality is more complicated, and not as flattering:

    King of Swords

    Divinatory Meanings: The things that come from justice and all things connected to it; power, command, authority, militant intelligence, law, offices of the government, and such related things.

    Reverse Meanings: Cruelty, perversity, barbarity, evil intent.

    Well now. They don't put that in the test!

    And here's another description of the card:

    The King of Swords is a stern individual with a prevailing sense of justice, honor and ethics. He is respected by others for his honesty and fairness, analytical abilities and intellect. This individual may be a judge or other authority figure who can be counted on to determine an impartial and fair judgement, refusing to let emotions affect punishment or reward, seeking to create balance in life.

    The King of Swords is portrayed very visually. He literally sees justice through the scales that represent his eyes. He is composed of the element of his suit and strong characteristics of his nature. This individual can be so divorced from his emotions as to be thoughtless of his impact on others, being arrogant and controlling.

    This card can show us a time in our life where we seek justice and symmetry, either within ourselves or in those around us. Or as in all the court cards, this card can announce the presence of an individual coming into our life who has these qualities of authority and a sense of justice overriding personal commitments.

    The main character in the movie Unforgiven, William Muny, is a King of Swords character.

    Not quite as comforting as images of Kennedy, Camelot, and Christopher Walken.

    I found this test through the indispensable Ghost of a flea, who is also the King of Swords. While normally I would find this coincidence amusing, there is that nagging punishment -- and I would not want to face punishment from a King of Swords personality. Ruthless is too mild a word.

    But hold on. My punishment awaits.




    Also from Ghost of a flea, I found "What Classic Movie Are You?" and while the Flea and I did not get the same result, the genre is the same.

    "Apocalypse Now" meet "Platoon"!

    (Hey, Kennedy did start the War in Vietnam, didn't he?)





    Finally, ominously, just as Colonel Kurtz received his in "Apocalypse Now!", the Flea delivered on my well-deserved punishment for cheating.

    This is serious slander though, and many bloggers would consider this the ultimate insult (just short of being linked to the one and only Robert Fisk!):


    The Hipster Intellecticus: call himself what he will (beatnik, philosophy major, liberal arts student), he's still hip and he still digs on Kerouac.
    You're the Hipster Intellecticus. Call yourself
    what you will (beatnik, philosophy major,
    liberal arts student), you're still hip and you
    still dig Kerouac.


    What Kind of Hipster Are You?
    brought to you by Quizilla

    GOD! I AM SENTENCED TO BE A.... FAN?...... OF NOAM? CHOMSKY?

    Nicholas, do you have to be so cruel? Is there no way to make the punishment fit the crime? All I did was figure out how to get an "A" on one of your tests. Really! Was I so bad that I deserve the horrible fate of being called a fan of Noam Chomsky?
    Properly chastised? My butt is so sore I can't sit!

    It will take me a long time to get over this one.


    (Come on. Pleeeeeze! I said I was sorry. I didn't mean to do it. The check was in the mail. I was a minor at the time. It was all because of post traumatic stress, a rough childhood, and acute symptoms of urban claustrophobia. It won't happen again! Honest!)




    UPDATE: In the comments section below, the Flea has shown mercy and compassion, and the picture below is my attempt to demonstrate -- as graphically as I can -- my sincerest gratitude and utmost appreciation:

    TireS.jpeg

    (There's more where that came from!)

    UPDATE: Thanks to my blogfather for that marvelous Chomsky link.

    posted by Eric at 09:02 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)




    I feel; therefore I am conservative?

    You don't feel. Therefore you are a liberal!

    The following turnaround in logic has to be the most novel definition of conservatism and liberalism I have seen -- reaching new heights in twisted thinking:

    This attitude toward belief -- that one should believe a proposition only if one has articulable reasons for it -- represents liberalism in the epistemic realm. The contrast is epistemic conservatism, which holds that belief -- in God, in the importance of marriage, in the value of tradition -- needs no defense. To a conservative, beliefs are presumed innocent until proven guilty. To a liberal, they are presumed guilty until proven innocent. The liberal epistemic standard begs the question against political conservatism, just as a conservative epistemic standard would beg the question against political liberalism. Conservatives must not fall for the liberal trick of making nonbelief the default position. (Via InstaPundit.)
    When I first read the above, it struck me as an outright attack on logic itself, for it contains so many unsupported premises as to appear ridiculous on its face. Without any support other than his blanket statement, the writer seems to equate emotion with conservatism, reason with liberalism, then pronounces the absence of reason correct -- in the process implicitly urging upon those he calls "conservatives" the apparent virtue of the unexamined life!

    But then I learned that the author is a professor of logic.

    This worried me, for I don't like to be fooled. Something had to be wrong.

    In the above, Professor Burgess-Jackson's original Tech Central Station post was itself fisked by another TCS writer, Kenneth Silber, who found inconsistencies such as this:

    Earlier you advocated conservatism by writing "It is never too late to let the heart be ruled by the brain." Now, you seem to be dismissing the brain. Isn't it the brain, rather than the heart, that tries to have articulated reasons for belief? Isn't it important that exponents of a political philosophy try to have reasons and arguments, rather than just state their beliefs as dogma? Besides, liberals with unexamined beliefs and unsupported assumptions do not seem all that rare.
    Interesting. How are we to reconcile such statements?

    Let's look at the logical conflicts:

    1. Liberals are wrong for questioning (rational) instead of believing (emotional).

    2. Conservatives are right for believing instead of examining.

    3. Conservatives are right for questioning instead of believing.

    4. Liberals are wrong for believing instead of questioning.

    You've gotta just love the purity of such an ideologue! But of course, he's off the hook because of his claim that any attempt at making him explain or justify his "beliefs" is a "liberal trick."

    I am aghast. But I still think someone (liberal or otherwise) is playing tricks on me.

    This reminds me of the pro-drug people who will jump up and down in praise of ever-more-draconian drug laws no matter what happens:

    1. If drug use goes up, it means the laws aren't working and we therefore need more laws and more enforcement.

    2. If drug use goes down, it means the laws are working and we therefore need more laws and more enforcement.

    3. Anyone who disagrees with the above reasoning, is part of the problem. Their mentality (the "climate" they created) makes us need these laws. Moreover, they are an "enemy" in the "war" which "we" must "fight."

    And of course, if you feel that way, you need not defend your position! Those who criticize you are guilty of logic and reason! You are superior, because you possess the most powerful beliefs of all: unexamined beliefs! (Unexamined beliefs, like unstated, concealed, hidden, or forbidden arguments, are in my view very dangerous, especially if people are encouraged not to examine them.)

    But there is more. Not completely trusting Burgess-Jackson, I poked around and found this definition of epistemic conservatism as:

    the concept that new theories or models are treated with skepticism until they are proven to be valid and useful.
    Fair enough. First in time wins until disproven? (Paganism beats Islam?) I might even be an epistemic conservative myself by that definition. But the idea that one's premises and beliefs need not be examined -- sorry, but that goes against my grain, and against everything I have ever been taught.

    PARENTHETICAL NOTE: I am NOT attempting to confuse epistemic conservatism with the crude logical error of "older is better".

    [ED. NOTE: "Older is better" is a topic I have discussed before in this blog.]

    Then I found this:

    For a theist, the belief that God exists is deeply entrenched, probably more than any other belief. If it turns out to be incompatible with some other, less-entrenched belief, the theist, if rational, will abandon that other belief. Entrenchment, however, is a matter of degree. Even though the logical tension can be resolved by abandoning belief in God, it won't be, it needn't be, and arguably it shouldn't be. We might think of this as epistemic conservatism, for it cautions us to give up as little as possible to maintain overall coherence (i.e., to "conserve" our beliefs). (I leave it to you to describe epistemic liberalism [reform of belief] and radicalism [revolutionary change in belief]. Different people have different epistemic principles.)

    This is why it is silly to think that the problem of evil -- the problem of reconciling belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good being with belief that there is evil -- will (or should) turn a theist into an agnostic. Epistemic conservatism dictates that belief in the existence of evil be abandoned before belief in the existence of God, for it is less entrenched. Whatever else you might want to say about it, theism is neither incoherent nor irrational.

    Well, OK. So now the question is one of ideological "entrenchment." That sounds more like a philosphical popularity contest than logic. Whose god wins the epistemic conservative award is based on whose god has the most followers? That scares me.

    However, Professor Burgess-Jackson has another test: which audience is listening to the argument.

    If effective argumentation is necessarily ad hominem in nature, then evaluation of an argument must attend to its audience. Let me illustrate this with an historical example. The French mathematician/philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) argued that it is in one's interest to believe in ("wager for") the Christian god. One of his premises implies that there are just two possibilities: Either the Christian god exists or no god exists. Some critics have charged that no self-respecting atheist or agnostic would accept this premise, for obviously there are other logical possibilities: a nonChristian god, for example, or many gods.

    Is this a legitimate criticism? No. Pascal's argument was not directed to atheists or agnostics. It was directed to backsliding Christians in general and to his backsliding Christian friends in particular. These individuals, raised in the Christian church, could be presumed to accept the premise, even if an atheist or an agnostic would not. To a backsliding Christian, there really are just two (live) options: the very ones Pascal described. Pascal, who was smarter than any of us (take my word for it), chose his premises wisely; he chose premises that he knew his interlocutors accepted. Any other premises would have frustrated his purpose, which was to save the souls of his benighted, misguided friends.

    I am not at all satisfied with winning an argument because of its "effectiveness." If the argument is logically invalid (which the above choice -- Christian god or no god-- is), then it makes no difference how many people buy it.

    Obviously, Burgess-Jackson feels otherwise.

    Well, I suppose you could say that either Burgess-Jackson is right about logic or else there is no logic.

    I'll close with this logical classic:

    Every decision you make, including what to eat, has costs and consequences. If you eat the flesh of an animal, then you are responsible not just for its death but for how it was made to live. That you yourself didn't do the killing is irrelevant, although it has the convenient effect of hiding the awful costs of your action from you. If you aren't prepared to raise and kill a turkey, don't eat one. It's that simple.
    It is?

    Much as I like it when things are made simple, if I didn't know Burgess-Jackson was a Bush supporter, I'd positively swear he was slamming him for the Iraqi "Christmas turkey" incident.

    But let's stick with logic, folks; the fact that he supports the president must mean that he believes that Bush was serving plastic turkey, and thus, no harm was done!

    Case closed.


    ADDITIONAL NOTE: Arthur Silber is also very skeptical of Burgess-Jackson:

    I find it altogether amazing that this writer actually teaches subjects such as logic and ethics. Allow me to translate that last paragraph in terms of what it actually means: "liberalism in the epistemic realm" means that one must have evidence for a proposition before one is prepared to accept it as true. "Epistemic conservatism," on the other hand, means that one can believe absolutely anything -- so long as it is sanctioned by "tradition" -- and nothing needs any "defense," that is, nothing requires any reasons to support it whatsoever. If a society has engaged in a practice long enough or believed certain notions, no matter how nonsensical, for a sufficient length of time, that is defense enough.
    Arthur does a much better job of fisking him than I did (even if I don't entirely agree with all of Arthur's points), so please read his entire post.

    UPDATE: Try as I might to give Professor Burgess-Jackson every benefit of the doubt, I think that his post -- driving a wedge between conservatism and logic -- is bad news.

    For conservatism and logic.

    And I'm more confused than ever before about what is a conservative?

    posted by Eric at 05:41 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)



    In the blogosphere, amazing factual opportunities abound!

    The blogosphere is great, and the blogosphere is good. There is nothing like it where it comes to the settling of great questions which would otherwise degenerate into endless petty, vindictive debates.

    There's quite a debate going on in the blogosphere over whether Bush is Hitler. MoveOn.org (and other left-wing sites) thinks Bush is Hitler, and the usual tendency of people on the other side has been to get all hot under the collar and indignantly deny the Hitler charge. Well, one blogger, the fearless Frank J., actually took the time to research this issue patiently and diligently, in a dignified and scholarly manner -- all in the finest traditions of blogging.

    His conclusion was that Bush is not Hitler. Not only am I 90% convinced that Frank J. is right, the more I think this over, the more I think we're all indebted to Frank for settling this urgent question.

    Meanwhile, Frank got other bloggers thinking. For example, I remembered the recent findings (by learned men of religion) that Hitler was gay, and I thought, "WOW, if Hitler was gay, George W. Bush can't be Hitler, because, well, Bush simply is not gay!" (Ask any liberal. For that matter, ask any conservative!)

    And Frank got another blogger named Tuning Spork thinking too. While rejecting another commenter's thesis that Howard Dean might be Hitler, he came up with a new idea: that Howard Dean and Lee Harvey Oswald are in fact one and the same:

    My research has revealed that Howard is not Hitler; he's Lee Harvey Oswald. That's why Marina Oswald moved to Vermont after Lee "died." I mean, just look at that face, that smirk, that arrogant condescending devil-may-care evil gleam in his eye.
    Case closed.
    Intrigued by this, I googled Dean and Oswald, and found that Mr. Spork is not alone in feeling this way:
    During the Kennedy assassination anniversary week I saw several cable shows about Lee Harvey Oswald and it struck me that Dean looks like Oswald with about 30 years added on. Same little pursed mouth and glazed eyes. Am I the only one noticing this?
    Am I being paranoid, or should the question at last be asked, "Who IS this man?"

    posted by Eric at 05:16 PM | TrackBacks (0)



    Reaching out to the past....

    Hey, in that last post I didn't mean to drag Caracalla into the American founding!

    As I keep saying, this blog engages in satire, and occasionally I like to take poetic/historic license....

    But I guess, I ought to balance the klassical karma, by dragging the founding fathers of this country back to the classical era of which they were so fond.

    I have long argued that this country was founded on classical values.

    And today, I offer some graphic evidence that I am not alone in my belief! Since 1895, Benjamin Franklin has been shown offering olive branches to young athletes in a remarkably accurate imitation of Olympian rites:

    ClassFndn.jpg


    If that didn't convince you that America was indeed built on ancient rites, check out these cool web sites!

    (OK, now who's gonna get serious around here?)

    UPDATE, IN THE INTEREST OF TOTAL AND ABSOLUTE ACCURACY: Um, I guess I missed some cool memorabilia.

    And in my haste to snap and post a photo, I failed to research the background of what it was, and so I missed this description of the plaque itself:

    The design for the Penn Relays plaque and medal was executed by Dr. R. Tait McKenzie in time for the 1925 meet. It shows Benjamin Franklin, founder of the University, seated in a chair modeled from his library chair, holding a laurel sprig in his left hand. He greets four runners, shaking the hand of the first, while the last holds a baton. Posing for the medal were former Penn athletes Larry Brown, Louis Madeira, George Orton and Ted Meredith. At the bottom of the relief is a lightning bolt, symbolic of Franklin's explorations in the nature of electricity.
    Those were real people??? (Sorry if I invaded anyone's privacy there....)

    And what about the issue of olive versus laurel? Frankly, I'm not enough of a botanist to know which it is, but I would remind serious classical scholars of the Olympian significance of both:

    The laurel (Laurus nobilis) contains, in fact, nothing that chemically would be active in inducing such prophetic seizures: it is purely a symbolic commemoration of the entheogens that once figured back in his homelands. Like Athena's olive, the daphne has Hyperborean associations, supposedly first transplanted by Apollo into the Mediterranean world via Thessaly; and like the olive, it is a surrogate for Aminita, the Indo-European sacred mushroom. But like the woinos of Dionysus, it also had Minoan antecedents: for Apollo, these included, as we have already seen, the Dirke Datura and the Lykos wolfsbane. In the assimilation of the two traditions of shamanism, the hysterical shrieks of Apollo's tormented brides became interpreted, not as a message from the chthonic underworld of the Goddess, but a clue to comprehending the mind of Zeus, himself. The fact that the possession was purely spiritual now, without any chemical inducement, made it even more appropriate to the aspirations of Olympian shamanism.
    Olive and laurel branches were, of course, used together as among this country's founding symbols. The olive and laurel branches are used synonymously in pagan rituals, and both are ancient symbols of victory.

    And peace, which the ancients recognized as often related to victory in war. Today, however, slogans such as

    PEACE IS VICTORY!

    or

    VICTORY IS PEACE!

    might be misinterpreted by either "side" depending on context.

    posted by Eric at 11:53 AM | TrackBacks (0)




    Would Caracalla disregard our Constitution?

    Take a serious look at these remarks:

    In parts of the country with lots of illegal immigrants—the 24 U.S. counties that border Mexico, plus much of the rest of California—the situation is becoming debilitating. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California estimates medical costs for illegal immigrants are running about $1 billion a year in her state; with superb political instincts, she's blaming no one and simply backing a bill to reimburse state and local hospitals with federal money. I spoke recently with an administrator of a Texas hospital in a border county, and he says current rules imperil his hospital and drive him nuts. And by the way, he's not allowed to call immigrants illegal. They're undocumented.

    The full economic effects are much wider. Employers who hire illegals pay them cash and thus evade employment taxes. They may also not report revenue from the work the illegals do and thus evade income taxes. Companies that compete with these employers must cut their own costs, mostly by paying their own workers (regardless of status) lower cash wages under the table, and the tax evasion spreads further.

    A downward spiral begins. Government revenues decline while demand for government services goes up. The burden on taxpayers grows heavier. They respond by finding their own ways to avoid taxes or simply by leaving, making the problem even worse.

    Until recently this was mostly a theoretical worry, but the recent rapid increase in illegal immigrants is making it real—and not just in border states. Latest census data show illegal immigrants increasing fast in Iowa, North Carolina, and Georgia.

    I said this was big trouble for a couple of reasons. Economics was the first. The second is deeper. The situation we've created mocks American laws and ideals. It tells working, taxpaying citizens and other legal residents with Social Security numbers that they're chumps. Go to the emergency room, and if you can't pay your bill, the hospital can track you down and garnish your wages. But the illegal immigrant can't be tracked and doesn't pay the bill. You pay it, through your taxes. You dope.

    What right wing nut dared say that?

    Actually, it was Geoffrey Colvin, senior editor at large of FORTUNE.

    Is this situation getting serious? I mean, is it possible to reach a point where there are so many immigrants that they start to destroy the integrity of a country?

    As a primary theme, this blog looks at modern America from an ancient viewpoint. While ancient Rome does not offer too many lessons on the pitfalls of excessive immigration per se, a couple of points are worth considering.

    Being an empire, Rome obviously had no objection to the inclusion -- even integration -- of numerous nationalities and peoples into the midst of daily Roman life. However, one thing remained sacrosanct, and that was the principle of Roman citizenship as a preferred category. Aliens were free to travel into Rome (or anywhere else) whether as slaves, traders, residents, whatever. But they did not possess the same rights as Roman citizens. This was one of the things which made Rome strong, and helped define it.

    Roman citizenship carried responsibility, more or less analogous to what is called noblesse oblige today. Many historians agree that a key cause of Rome's decline was the decline in this sense of civic responsibility -- particularly military service. After 212 AD that was farmed out more and more to German tribesmen and other distant peoples -- whose loyalty to Rome was questionable. Defenses weakened accordingly, which makes sense, because how could non-Romans be entrusted with the defense of Rome? This is all the more the case when barbarian soldiers were called upon to defend Rome from other barbarians. True, some were heroes; Stilicho immediately comes to mind. But it just wasn't quite the same thing as the noble days when Romans defended their own country, and the Roman army was headed by Roman officers.

    I am not arguing that this phenomenon was the sole cause of something as complex as Rome's decline, but I think it likely that psychologically, it was conducive to the decay (ironically) of classical values among the Romans themselves:

    In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, noted historian Edward Gibbons masterfully describes this decline of virtue:
    "That public virtue which among the ancients was denominated patriotism, is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the preservation and prosperity of the free government of which we are members. Such a sentiment, which had rendered the legions of the republic almost invincible, could make but a very feeble impression on the mercenary servants of a despotic prince" (1: 9).

    In fairness, Gibbon doesn’t imply that such changes are irreversible and goes on to describe a time when "For a while the angry and selfish passions of the soldiers had been suspended by the enthusiasm of public virtue" (281). In reality, most of these upturns in Roman virtue were short-lived and the overall trend was away from the classical values so eloquently depicted in Virgil’s Aeneid.

    The decline of Rome has been considered to include in its origin Caracalla's Constitutio Antoniniana -- which diluted the once-privileged status of Roman citizenship by conferring it to everyone in the Empire with the exception of slaves.

    I found a fascinating letter reprinted in the New Left Review, which cites (a bit ominously, in my view) Caracalla's edict with approval, with historic implications for the future of the united States:

    In 212 AD the Emperor Caracalla, mindful of the barbarian hordes at his borders and the growing costs of military expenditure, took the revolutionary step of declaring every freeman of the Roman Empire—from the banks of the Tigris to the Atlantic Ocean—a citizen of Rome. In a trice, the faltering superpower was reinforced by millions of new taxpayers, talents and recruits. The edifice endured for another two hundred years.

    Today, does not Western civilization—in the hands of a mere 15 per cent of the world’s population and, thanks to globalization, as visible to the other 85 per cent as the contents of a Hermès shop-window in the Place Saint-Denis—demand a similarly unified power? Shared goals unite Europe and the US. We all seek to deregulate our economies, democratize our hinterlands, promote human rights. But our wealth attracts resentment and around us there surges a rising tide of the hungry and the dispossessed. Huntington’s homilies on the clash of civilizations ignore the crucial fact that the world is also divided into states. The point, for any man of action, is to ensure that ideologies and institutions coincide. Would there be an Islam today, if an Umayyad and then an Abbasid imperium had not arisen within decades of Mohammed’s death? If Damascus and Baghdad had not been political, as well as religious, capitals? Would we have a Christianity had there not been a Christendom, Carolingian or Byzantine, to hold back Arab incursions? A Mount Athos, without the ramparts of Constantinople? Cistercians, without a Frankish chivalry, Jesuits, without a Charles V?

    .....

    Is it just, is it democratic, that the inhabitants of the fifty states alone should vote for the American president, whose thumbs-down determines the fate not just of a couple of gladiators but of millions of lives?

    The task, admittedly, would be easier if our new Augustus, relaxing on Air Force One, would scribble his reflections in French or German, as Marcus Aurelius in Greek. But the resemblance between the pioneers of the Tiber and the apprentices of the Potomac is striking: on both sides, one finds the same pragmatic refusal of abstraction, historical optimism, inaptitude for melancholy; chicanery everywhere, from the Operations Room to the marriage bed. Both offer a welcome for strangers and a respect for all gods. In both, the conquered—Latinos, Japanese—are granted citizens’ rights.

    The first step is to instruct our international-law specialists to draw up a conversion plan, transforming a region of common values into one of shared sovereignty.

    This sounds ominous to me, because I am a staunch believer in the United States Constitution, which so many (Americans or otherwise) would casually disregard to promote their view of a greater world good. Were it not for the Constitution, the unique freedom it secures would not be in such abundance as to be taken for granted and diluted by globalism.

    Is it possible that uncontrolled immigration is a foot in the door for creeping globalization which will ultimately threaten our constitutional freedoms? I worry that things may be approaching that point. International legal precedents are openly solicited by Supreme Court justices despite the Constitution's very clear language defining it as the supreme law of the land.

    Can the Constitution ever be destroyed by barbarian hordes?

    Hey, don't look at me; I didn't vote for Caracalla!

    (But I don't think you have to be Phyllis Schlafly or WorldNetDaily to be a little bit concerned....)


    UPDATE: Emperor Misha makes me look like a limp-wristed, namby-pamby miquetoast:

    By adding another 8 million cases to the already severely backlogged (to the tune of 4.5 million cases) agency formerly known as the INS, he'll ensure that people who have tried to get here legally and have followed every rule to the letter can sit around and wait for a couple of more years, all so that President Peabrain can throw in a bid for a voting bloc that wouldn't vote for him if his hair was on fire.
    And those are the Emperor's mildest words. (As the old saying goes, "Read the whole thing™.")

    posted by Eric at 10:09 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)




    Black and white bigots unite!

    (Or, "Why I am not a conservative"?)

    This post was prompted by my just having received yet another mailer from Vernon Robinson -- the same guy who interrupted me the one time I wanted to write a music review!

    Words like "conservative" and "liberal" are thrown around so much that it is very difficult to ascertain with any precision whether one fits either definition.

    While I would rather not care, sometimes it is easier to define yourself with reference to what you are not, and when I look at some of what are called "leading conservatives" -- well, all I know is that I am definitely not in their camp, and never would be.

    There is a very loud and angry clique of conservatives who truly believe in bigotry, and are willing to go to any lengths to advance their agenda. A recurrent tactic (the latest incarnation of which is in the person of Vernon Robinson) is the attempt to forge a coalition between black and white anti-gay bigots, and define this as "conservatism" -- a process which the liberals are delighted to assist! There is a certain hard core of real homo-haters -- WorldNetDaily types who believe there is a "gay consipracy" to bring down Western civilization; religious fanatics like Dobson, Falwell, LaHaye, Kennedy, and Lively; cheap demagogues like Michael Savage -- and while they might not all get along with each other, when they unite together they have the ability to generate money and sell books. They hold in common the view that sex -- especially gay sex -- is at the root of all evil, and that people should not be left alone.

    I will not associate myself with such people, and if they are defined as conservative, then I know that either I am not a conservative, or the word has lost any real meaning.

    This is not said in defense of liberals, who attempt to forge equally idiotic (and equally bigoted) coalitions.... (Long ago I decided I was definitely not a liberal....)

    Yet liberals call me conservative, while conservatives call me liberal. I am unwelcome in both the Republican and Democratic parties.

    Being politically homeless is nothing new.


    UPDATE: "Being politically homeless is nothing new" -- especially to a gay gun nut! I know I don't need to remind regular readers of this conundrum -- but I should always bear in mind that newcomers to this blog might forget a major reason why I started it -- or (worse yet) fail to visit my blogfather!

    posted by Eric at 10:56 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)




    Rapidly moving West!

    It is really amazing how links can travel!

    Walter in Denver (that's Walter Schlomer, of course -- a longtime favorite of mine, and one of my very first links) recently thought highly enough of my piece on Rosalie Bertell to link to it in his blog.

    The next thing that happened was that Dave Kopel -- not only a distinguished author and scholar but a "real print" columnist writing in the Rocky Mountain News -- linked to Walter (justly called the best blogger in Colorado), and then to Classical Values (because of Walter's link to this blog)!

    I am of course honored that two journalists of such high caliber would link to me, and I welcome any new visitors from Colorado who might have happened by.

    While I'm not much of an expert on Colorado, as an amateur herpetologist it often interested me that Colorado (and the other Rocky Mountain states) represents the Western range limit for many turtles. Most water turtle species are found only East of the Rockies, and the Continental Divide has provided a barrier of sorts (with the eastward flow of water limiting their migration).

    Slowly, though, their range is bound to inch West.

    Turtles, of course, cannot take advantage of liberalized immigration laws -- or (unlike blogs) the Internet....




    SPEAKING OF TURTLES: Despite the existence of the mighty Rocky Mountains as a sort of natural Maginot Line, the aggressive and ill-tempered Snapping Turtle has already pushed its range Westward -- some having made it as far as California. (Where fruitless efforts to deport them are vigorously underway.)

    But meanwhile the poor Bog Turtle is seriously threatened by its ever-shrinking East Coast habitat. (If only they could rename it the Blog Turtle! Maybe then it could change with the times!)

    posted by Eric at 06:36 PM | TrackBacks (0)



    The ideal versus the practical?

    In response to my post on Michael Demmons' welfare remarks, I received a thoughtful email. I just replied to it, and it seems fair to share this with other readers.

    (The following is somewhat abbreviated.)

    EMAIL TO ME:

    Been looking at your blogs here and there. Re: the poor and stupid drain us all - I have a lot of sympathy with the get-off-your-ass-and-work philosophy, but I really believe that some people are not nearly as bright as others. People Can help themselves if they're merely ignorant, but Stupid people are Stupid, they can't help that any more than you can help the color of your skin. I agree that even most Stupid people can be trained to do Something, but someone has to be there to get them going in the right direction - just like a child - and watch over them, just like a child. Do we as a society let them live in misery simply because their parents abandon them? Do we sterilize everyone with an IQ of less than 100?

    MY REPLY:

    I do worry about the lowest common denominator (of the stupid) becoming the standard to which we are all reduced. Sterilization strikes me as a grotesque violation of human rights, but so does forcing person A to subsidize person B. Where does it end? Charity ought to be voluntary, but then, I don't think anyone should be allowed to starve. The truly stupid-to-the-point-of-helpless need to be cared for, but the fact that some people are more stupid than others should not obligate the smarter to take care of the dumber.

    Theologically, I guess it boils down to whether we are our brother's keeper. Ayn Rand would call this altruism, and condemn it. What I don't like is the utilization of force to promote altruism -- so I am not a true Randian (and thus I get in lots of arguments with them).

    I suppose I should also add that because the welfare system has been in place for many decades, it cannot simply be terminated abruptly without provoking horrors possibly worse than the welfare system itself. Slavery was an evil far worse than welfare, but the country exploded over the suggestion that it be terminated, because there was a vast status quo invested in the institution. So, as a pragmatist, I hesitate to base my thinking solely on whether something is right or wrong. It is possible to recognize the wrongness of something yet acknowledge that starting a civil war over it compounds the wrongness.

    Once again, this returns to the distinction between the good and the right, and (as is so often the case where ways of thinking collide) there are no easy answers.


    BY THE WAY: Michael Demmons' piece seems destined to become a blogdom classic. Ask Dean Esmay.

    For me, it stood out like a piece of rare art, and so I had to quote it. Many people agree with Michael, but would never dare say so.

    posted by Eric at 05:35 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (2)



    Are you now, or have you ever been, a RETROSEXUAL?

    Richard Cohen, after agonizing over whether he's a "metrosexual," has offered the gratuitous socio-labelers a new category: "RETROSEXUAL."

    Howard Dean pronounced himself a metrosexual and then characteristically said he wasn't sure what that was -- but whatever it was, he wasn't. Among politicians, Arnold Schwarzenegger may be the most metrosexual of them all, since no man ever paid more attention to his body -- except maybe Richard Simmons, another category altogether. Ronald Reagan is a metrosexual and so was Kemal Ataturk, a regular clotheshorse and ladies' man who single-handedly modernized Turkey.

    Saddam Hussein, a dapper dictator in his salad days, was a metrosexual but emerged from his hole a pure heterosexual. Tim Russert is not a metrosexual, George Stephanopoulos is, Bill Clinton is an omnisexual, Ann Coulter is a psychosexual and Strom Thurmond was just a pig.

    As for myself, I am still perplexed. I am a fervid fan of the late Cary Grant, who was the best-dressed actor ever to appear on the screen. (Just watch how his trouser pleats don't open when he crouches on a rooftop in "To Catch a Thief.")

    While I never noticed the non-opening trouser pleats, I am sure Richard Cohen is right.

    In the interests of full disclosure, though, I should point out that I never liked the word "metrosexual" -- and I flunked the official metrosexual test. My results?

    You're an average Joe. Almost wallpaper. You shop at the mall, furnish your home at the department store and spend your weekends watching sports. If you were any more plain, you'd be Al Gore.

    Our advice: Get a life, get a personality and get some style.
    Or get a love interest who can do it for you.

    (From Andrew Ian Dodge, via Dean Esmay.)

    I am glad I have never been a metrosexual. "Retrosexual", however (notwithstanding Mr. Cohen's definition), is evocative of sexual nostalgia, and I am not sure I am ready for that.

    posted by Eric at 01:35 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)



    More on Angels in America

    In a long and thoughtful analysis, Arthur Silber reflects upon Angels in America. It is well worth the read, and I say this even though I am no fan of Tony Kushner. But despite my disagreements, Kushner is a fine playwrite and fair is fair. Arthur calls his review a labor of love, and it really is.

    A sample:

    [Angels in America] is stunningly original. It's not a play or film you've seen before: it mixes politics, psychology, sexuality, religion, the countless intersections of all these issues with each other, general cultural trends, the future of the world -- and fantasy elements, lots of wonderful fantasy -- in all sorts of unimaginable ways. Unimaginable, that is, until Kushner imagined them, and presented them as a wonderful gift to all of us. For me, that above all places Angels in America far, far above almost any other new play I can think of in the last decade, or even two. If Angels did nothing else, that alone would be cause for celebration.

    But Angels does much more than that. It offers us provocative ideas to think about for countless hours, it brings us characters that we care about enormously -- and it does all this in a marvelously theatrical and entertaining manner. Furthermore, in many of its concerns and the issues it raises, it is a drama clearly intended for adults. In this day and age, with most films being imitations of imitations of movies that were often not that good in the first place, and with many films being $100 million comic books, that is also an achievement of great note. And Angels is shot through with wonderful, pointed wit and humor. I think this should also be mentioned: a viewer need not be concerned with many of the issues I discuss below, or even most of them. You can, if you choose, simply sit back, and enjoy and contemplate it. That is, after all, what art is for in large measure. Angels in America is altogether a genuinely remarkable achievement, for all of these reasons, and for additional ones as well. But these are all evaluations -- so here are a number of specifics to support them. In the following, I will simply proceed through the drama as it unfolds.

    If you haven't seen Angels in America, at least read all of what Arthur has to say about it.

    I can't stand crassly politicized art, and I don't like being manipulated (as I complained in an earlier post). But at the same time, I don't think political disagreements should ever interfere with appreciation in the esthetic sense-- or the acknowledgment of artistic genius.

    posted by Eric at 12:14 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)




    Is war inconvenient?

    There's something I want to add to this story:

    On Dec. 24, Air France canceled six flights between Paris and Los Angeles at the urging of American officials, who said they suspected that as many as a half-dozen passengers had "links to terrorism." French officials said last week that they had found no terrorist links to the people booked on those flights, but American officials said the United States was still investigating people who had reserved seats but did not show up for the flights.
    The above link I found via Eugene Volokh, who poses the following question:
    If the U.S. did indeed have solid information that terrorists were planning to board Air France flights to the U.S., wouldn't it have more sense to keep the flights officially scheduled and get France to arrest the terrorists when they showed up at the airport, rather than make a public announcement that the flights were canceled due to terrorism concerns and ensure that the terrorists would not show up?
    Professor Volokh links to this analysis, which is quite involved, and which speculates about what might have happened.

    From what I heard, what happened was not terribly complicated. American authorities discovered that Air France was going to allow persons on the "no fly" list to fly on a particular flight. The Americans told them that the flight would not be allowed to take off, and the French threw a hissy fit and told American authorities that if they wanted to be that way, the French would not allow any of their scheduled flights to leave the US that night. The Americans told them they couldn't care less, so the French grounded their own planes. The US was not embarrassed in the least (even if some want the US to be embarrassed). As to my information, the source is highly placed and of impeccable integrity, but I would never name him or her -- and I will not even name whatever agency he or she might work for. You can just take my word for it. Or leave it.

    Anyway, I for one couldn't care less whether the French ground their stupid planes -- or, for that matter, whether the US orders their stupid planes grounded. For anyone in the United States to be embarrassed about it is ridiculous.

    Have people forgotten that this a war?

    In which planes are used as weapons?

    A "no fly" list strikes me as eminently reasonable under the circumstances.

    I am beginning to think that if Muhammad Atta and the other September 11 terrorists were kept off planes tomorrow because of a "no fly" list, the French, (and people who think along similar lines) would be screaming about civil rights violations....


    UPDATE: The following observation from Eric S. Raymond is quite apt:

    In the warped moral universe that Reuters and the BBC and much of America's own elite media inhabit, American power is so frightening and loathsome that Islamist barbarians are actually preferable to George W. Bush. They'll print with a straight face quotes by al-Qaeda apologists condemning the U.S. as a ‘rogue state’ and U.S. policies as terrorism, while refusing to use the word ‘terrorist’ for Al-Hamas attacks that target Israeli children for mass murder.

    (Via Instapundit.)

    I would never equate criticism of Bush with support for terrorism. But as to the people who seriously believe Islamic terrorists are preferable to Bush, well....

    Do you want them in charge of security on your next flight?

    posted by Eric at 08:16 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)



    Local Berkeley nostalgia!

    More local politics.

    A nearby community, Narberth, Pennsylvania, is seeming more and more like Berkeley, California, and it is tearing the place apart. Today's Philadelphia Inquirer featured an article -- "Narberth tempest pits old residents vs. new" -- which focuses on a local man named Angus Love who was recently appointed to Narberth's Civil Service Commission (which oversees police hiring and discipline).

    The article describes Mr. Love as:

    just another Cub Scout dad until early last month, when someone discovered his name on a 1997 Internet petition in support of an event titled "The People's International Tribunal for Justice for Mumia abu-Jamal.
    Just another Cub Scout dad?

    Most Cub Scout dads didn't work as Events Chair of the Philadelphia National Lawyers Guild to assist the illegal demonstrators who ran amok at the Republican Convention in 2000.

    Illegal demonstrations, activists said, require a different kind of preparation. The practitioners engage in what is called direct action, such as linking arms to block entry to a building. Often, such demonstrators may tussle with police and land in jail, meaning they will need help from special legal, medical and logistical teams.

    To that end, the direct action group has both a "legal team" and a "medical team." The National Lawyers Guild will field more than 100 pro-bono "legal observers" during the demonstrations, said Angus Love, the Philadelphia chapter's events chair.

    Love said the legal observers would wear bright yellow hats and would carry checklists to ensure police do not use excessive force when confronting protesters.

    I guess I shouldn't feel too homesick....

    UPDATE: Angus Love has RESIGNED:

    NARBERTH - Call it "The Mumia Effect," a political force strong enough to pit neighbor against neighbor, even in this friendly Main Line borough.

    And now call it victorious:

    After a monthlong battle to hold on to his appointed position in borough government, lawyer Angus Love resigned the post on Sunday, saying the "Mumia Effect" was simply too destructive.

    Love, 54, was accused of signing a 1997 Internet petition in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981.

    Police, the GOP mayor, and the weekly Main Line Times went on the warpath. Love denies signing the petition, but after making a stand, he and the Democrats behind him decided to fold.

    "Folks that we have known for 10, 20, 30 years have been going door to door spreading hateful literature and speaking out against us," Love wrote in his resignation letter.

    The article carries on at length over whether Love actually signed the Mumia petition. Frankly, I think his leadership role in the National Lawyer's Guild -- a fact Love cannot deny -- is infinitely more damning than the petition hoopla.

    But hey, who asked me? I'm just a lowly blogger.

    posted by Eric at 04:59 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)



    A little fishy....

    I thought I was crazy last night.

    Visiting a friend who has a brand new LCD projection television coupled with a killer sound system, I asked for a demo, and my friend obliged by plopping in a DVD I had never seen before: "Finding Nemo."

    As a demonstration, the machine worked so well that it was mind-boggling. The sound and the picture, the colors and special effects, the flawless computer animation, all left me breathless.

    The problem -- something I had not planned for -- was the film's content. What I thought would be an innocent, most likely boring kids' film turned out to be a slick political tear-jerker obviously intended to brainwash impressionable children (and it's good enough to brainwash many a parent, too). To call it manipulative would be an understatement; I really think that to subject children to hard-hitting propaganda like this borders on evil. Kids who see this could instantly become emotional leftie activists or (in the case of the smarter ones who see through it) deeply cynical before they're ready.

    Which is why I went to bed deeply disturbed, and thinking I must be crazy. I mean, I don't have any kids, so why the hell should I care what Disney is trying to do to other people's kids?

    Because there is such cunning deception, that's why! Even I (a cynical, suspicious person who has seen and expects to see the worst in everyone) had seen the ads for "Finding Nemo" and just thought it was a nice kids' film. I never suspected that it was political propaganda disguised as a nice kids' film. I mean, I have no problem with the existence of films showing man as the enemy, men as evil rapists of the environment, Americans as stupid and bad, the military as evil -- but the films ought to be marketed as such and the bias disclosed.

    Apparently, I am not alone. One blogger asks:

    Should we be worried by this obvious attempt by the American entertainment industry to brainwash children into believing this kind of post-modern disingenuousness? Are children being conditioned at an early age by the media to view political correctness as an unassailable secular truth? Are we setting them up for a fall in later life?
    Well, I don't know about the "we" -- because I have a major problem with the manipulative use of that pronoun. (But I guess we just have to use it that way.) However, I don't like to see myself as setting children up for a political-correctness-induced fall in later life -- and I fear that films like "Finding Nemo" are probably a good way to do it.

    The best review I found confronted the film's manipulative nature head-on:

    The final straw came for me when they showed a picture of the dentist’s little girl, portrayed as a "fish killer", and her holding up a plastic bag with a dead fish in it. It had taken me a little while to put the pieces together, but by now it was evident. This was not a story, but a political statement.

    Whoever was in charge at Pixar (I can only assume it was Lasseter) came up with the idea of using this film to scare the willies out of young kids for the sole purpose of sending out the message that "humans are bad because they’re killing fish". Let me guide you through some of the symbolism I saw.

    The lame scene with the sharks happens in an old WWII minefield, with a submarine as a home base for the sharks. Human leftovers are to be equated to the worst of the sea’s predators. Okay, that’s a slight stretch. But they didn’t leave anything to chance with the picture of the young girl "fish killer". Also, there was Nemo himself. He was the character that kids were supposed to identify with, and he was a disobedient and unruly brat.

    Hence, kids are disobedient and unruly brats that kill fish. What can we do to prevent this? Let’s scare a few years off of them, so they’ll never bother fish again! And for some kids, it’s undoubtedly worked. The IMDB reviews contain several examples of kids who had less than a good time at the theater (and nightmares after). I did notice that the IMDB refused to publish my review—I guess the truth hurts.

    So Pixar’s made their political statement—humans, don’t go near the water.

    I can see why the flunkies at the IMDB refused to publish the above review. For the same reason, it's an absolute honor for me to quote from it.

    Ironically, the environmentalist brainwashing has not done a very good job of saving the hapless clown fish. Instead, "Finding Nemo" triggered a "101 Dalmations" style run on these little fish, which aquarium and pet supply stores couldn't keep in stock.

    And of course, many children, now wracked with anthropomorphic guilt, have been reenacting the fish liberation scenes, flushing the poor little pet fishies down the toilets! (Another Hollywood idea as bogus as the grotesque fish anthropomorphism.*)

    I guess that's good for the economy after all.

    Can't these Hollywood commies do anything right?




    * Speaking of fish anthropomorphism, how about the clown fish as a role model for humans? Consider the following:

    ....[A]ll Clown fish start life as males. As they grow, the most dominant one in a social group will transform and become a female. The next dominant fish will become the breeding male.
    Now why do you suppose they left that out of the film?

    UPDATE: ERIC YOU BLASTED FOOL! You've just given away the plot for the sequel!


    UPDATE: And as if we needed further proof of the clouds which cover every silver lining, one of the commenters below supplies this wonderful link to a review of "Little Nemo" by Iain Murray in the National Review. The whole film is basically an attack on the "Precautionary Principle":

    a pernicious and retrograde idea that has enthused regulators and nanny statists all over the world.
    GO READ IT NOW!

    I stand (harrumph!) politically corrected.


    UPDATE: (Precautionary Principle at work?) Little Nemo would have a heck of a time getting onto an airplane, as Arthur Silber illustrates.

    Little fish are now a national security issue -- and it's time to get tough!

    posted by Eric at 01:49 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)




    Stop wasting money on preventable diseases!

    There is an interesting debate between Eugene Volokh and Clayton Cramer focusing on NIH statistics on AIDS spending (versus other, less "guilty" diseases), and while there isn't much I can add to the debate about "homosexual special interests," I wanted to point out that there is more to the AIDS spending debate than homosexuality or homosexual special interests.

    First, while AIDS is not a big threat to monogamous heterosexuals in the United States, it has major international repercussions. Many millions of people are infected and millions are dying worldwide. The disease has been shown to mutate. Thus, to ignore it in the hope that "normal" Americans will never have anything to fear not only ignores an increasingly interconnected world (like it or not), but assumes that rapidly evolving Third World forms of the disease (already more virulent than the American variety) will magically stop.

    Second, AIDS research is much more than simply research into how to treat or kill a sexually transmitted virus. Understanding AIDS means understanding and unlocking the mysteries of the immune system. Countless diseases including cancer, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma, psoriasis, the aging process, the search for life extension -- all of these and more depend on understanding the immune system.

    According to a leading researcher, AIDS research

    has opened up a lot of doors for us toward understanding the complexity of the human immune system in a way that no amount of ethical human experimentation would have allowed us to do.
    All the dying homos who've been sneered at and belittled gave themselves as willing guinea pigs to research which will ultimately benefit the ungrateful wretches who think that the sexual origin of their disease means they don't deserve the same breaks as cigarette smokers.

    Or beef eaters?

    Yeah, how about Mad Cow? For a disease which has only killed 150 people worldwide, it seems to me that there's an awful lot of fuss being made.

    (After all, the disease is entirely preventable.....)



    And while I'm at it, will someone please tell me why it matters logically whether a disease or an illness was avoidable? Many auto accidents were avoidable; does that mean that accident victims are less deserving of treatment? Or that we should spend less on trauma research?

    ("Sorry, you should have looked both ways before crossing the street! No treatment for you, ha ha ha!" or "You ate too often at Burger King! No bypass surgery for you!")

    posted by Eric at 06:23 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)



    Married to socialism?

    I found myself unable to ignore Michael Demmons' remarks about socialism and welfare:

    I have a problem with the government performing services for people who won't fend for themselves. I make exceptions for people like children, who are the victims of cruel parents. But here's where I stand on "social assistance." I will also make some exceptions for these people - and they have to meet them all:
  • If a person is desperately poor.

  • If that person is absolutely unable to get an education.

  • If that person's family absolutely refuses to help him (for which every one of them should be skewered.)

  • If that person is so disabled that he or she can absolutely not perform any work.
  • Then, and only then, should the government step in and help.

    Only then.

    Sorry if that sounds "insensitive," but I don't generally give a rat's ass about people who don't give a rat's ass about me and live only to milk the system for all it's worth.

    You may poo-poo over people who are poooooor. I don't. And I also don't want these people to be poor. Bottom line: actions have consequences. There is no one - NO ONE in this country who is unable to get an education and have a good life if they take risks and try with everything they have. Unfortunately, there are millions who know that they will be "cared for" by people like you and me no matter how little they decide to do in life. There is no one in this country who is "fortunate" and, therefore, no one in this country who is "less fortunate." Fortunate implies that by some cosmic mistake they became successful. And I have news for all you whiny leftists out there: RICH PEOPLE WORK THEIR ASSES OFF FOR EVERYTHING THEY HAVE. And you know something else? THEY EMPLOY YOUR SORRY ASS! And another thing: They have every damned right to leave every cent they have to their kids - just like you do.

    There are always options. One of them should not be to milk me and you for everything we have.

    And screw you if you believe we have a responsibility to take care of people who screw their lives up by being stupid. I won't contribute to sustaining that gene pool if I can help it.

    Michael is absolutely right, of course.

    This has reminded me once again of how the phony struggle between social conservatism and social liberalism prevents the real issue -- the establishment of socialism itself -- from ever being addressed. Republicans and Democrats preside over a permanent socialist welfare state (differing from each other only in the speed of implementation). For many years, I have often suspected that shifting the debate to secondary topics is a way of avoiding the ugly reality.

    It's almost as if they know what would happen were the fluff issues finally settled.....

    Or ignored. What the hell does homosexuality have to do with the federal government, anyway? Now that the sodomy laws are gone, what are they going to do? Start a giant national debate over same sex marriage?

    I for one am not going to fall for it. (Even though I know that such distractions work.)

    The real marriage is the permanent one between Republicans and Democrats. The longer they are married to socialism, the less likely it will ever be eradicated.

    (Barring another civil war, of course....)

    posted by Eric at 09:46 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)




    Even sweet addictions allow no breaks!

    This is a bad time for blogging, because in the past few days I have not had any time at all to think, much less write. "All partied out," is as fair a description as I can allow under the circumstances.

    However, the show must go on, time permitting or not, and it is still Online Testing Day at Classical Values.

    Let's start with a test which I should have posted yesterday, but because it's a day late it's really more of a New Years Hangover.

    While my New Years Resolution ought to be to stop vacationing and return to this blog in full swing, the highly resolved Ghost of a flea supplied a test indicating otherwise.

    According to "What Should Your New Year's Resolution Be?" I should break stuff!


    Take the What Should Your New Year's Resolution Be? Quiz

    A very worrisome logical conundrum, because if I must resolve "to break stuff," then if I break stuff I break stuff, and if I don't break stuff, I still break stuff, because I break my resolution.

    Worst of all, what if the resolution is interpreted as a command to break the resolution itself? I would then be completely trapped in a logical hall of mirrors: unable to either follow it or break it!

    Anyway, I already broke with tradition -- by getting a different result from the Flea. His result was revolutionary!

    [CONFIDENTIAL NOTE to Nicholas only: I promise not to break stuff if you promise not to beat me, OK?]

    But -- in the most astonishing result of all today, I got exactly the same numerical score as the Flea in the "Are you a blogaholic?" test now making the rounds:

    76 points is in the 51 through 80 percent

    You are a dedicated weblogger. You post frequently because you enjoy weblogging a lot, yet you still manage to have a social life. You're the best kind of weblogger. Way to go!

    "Still manage to have a social life," huh? (Little do they know.....)

    The Blogaholic test I found through Charles Hill BEFORE I saw it at Ghost of a flea. What that means is that my score could not possibly have been contaminated by my having already seen the Flea's results.

    It also means that Charles Hill is probably less crippled by this insidious, vicious disease which can strike anyone dumb enough to imagine that he can "handle it."

    (I can quit any time, of course....)




    Last of all, through Jay Solo I finally discovered what kind of candy bar I am:

    ski
    You're Skittles!!! You have a very interesting
    personality, you're so unique. You're the kind
    of person who always thinks outside of the box.
    You're also a very accepting individual, and
    believe in inner beauty.


    Which kind of candy are you?
    brought to you by Quizilla

    Doesn't that Skittles picture look like a float from the Mummers Parade?

    posted by Eric at 10:42 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)




    Paying homage to Momus!

    Not much blogging lately. New Years Celebrations kept me busy most of the day today, but I thought the famous Philadephia tradition, the Mummers Parade, was worth a few words and maybe a picture.

    First, some history. The following description accompanies a National Geographic photograph from the 1922 Mummers Parade:

    New Year’s tradition almost as old as Philadelphia. Early revelers masqueraded through the streets in the 18th century, firing muskets as they sauntered door to door asking for cakes and ale. During the 19th century the “shooters” formed clubs and competed for prizes from merchants. The press called them Mummers after the English “mumming play,” which in turn probably got its name from the German word for disguise.
    Here's a photograph I took today:

    Mummers04.jpg


    The Mummers tradition is ancient; like most stuff which lasts, it is of pagan origin:

    The Shooters and Mummers Parade's roots stretch as far back as the late 1700s, when Swedish immigrants to the U.S. brought along their customs of making lots of noise (for example, banging pots and pans), and visiting friends on the day after Christmas. The tradition expanded to New Year's Day and picked up elements from other cultural celebrations, including the Roman feast of saturnalia and the Greek celebrations of King Momus.
    Momus, the god of farce, sarcasm, and ridicule presides over the Carnaval scene everywhere; one of the themes of the Mummers Parade in 2000 was "Circus Momus." (By the way, this collection of photographs by John Fischer assembles the best images of the Mummers to be found anywhere on the Internet.)

    An important, surviving, pagan god, this Momus. He serves to remind us that humor, sarcasm and healthy criticism are necessary life elements.

    Here's a poem about Momus:

    MOMUS, GOD OF LAUGHTER

    Ella Wheeler Wilcox

    Though with gods the world is cumbered,
    Gods unnamed, and gods unnumbered,
    Never god was known to be
    Who had not his devotee.
    So I dedicate to mine,
    Here in verse, my temple-shrine.


    'Tis not Ares,--mighty Mars,
    Who can give success in wars.
    'Tis not Morpheus, who doth keep
    Guard above us while we sleep,
    'Tis not Venus, she whose duty
    'Tis to give us love and beauty;
    Hail to these, and others, after
    Momus, gleesome god of laughter.


    Quirinus would guard my health,
    Plutus would insure me wealth;
    Mercury looks after trade,
    Hera smiles on youth and maid.
    All are kind, I own their worth,
    After Momus, god of mirth.


    Though Apollo, out of spite,
    Hides away his face of light,
    Though Minerva looks askance,
    Deigning me no smiling glance,
    Kings and queens may envy me
    While I claim the god of glee.


    It's Carnival Time! Celebrate!

    Wisdom wearies, Love has wings -
    Wealth makes burdens, Pleasure stings,
    Glory proves a thorny crown -
    So all gifts the gods throw down
    Bring their pains and troubles after;
    All save Momus, god of laughter.
    He alone gives constant joy.

    Hail to Momus, happy boy.

    Yeah, hail indeed!

    Definitely, Momus ruled in Philly today.

    posted by Eric at 11:30 PM | TrackBacks (0)




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