There was a similar moral deficit when it came to foreign policy. The xenophilliac 68ers, could by and large, never grasp that there were two competing truths about Vietnam. Yes, we, the Americans shouldn't have been there. But yes, the Communists were brutal thugs. When after the war had ended and a million and half people went into the sea to escape the regime of the North Vietnamese Stalinists, the famously voluble moralising associated with the 68ers was replaced by sustained silence. Today, aided by the Bush administration's extraordinary meld of simple mindedness and incompetence, the 68ers are similarly unable to come to grips with Jihadism. Too self-absorbed to be self-reflective, they both denounce the neo-conservatives for assuming that everyone wants freedom and democracy, yet insist that we can negotiate without conditions with terrorist regimes on the grounds that we share a great deal in common.
...Or - if you're having trouble winning, change the rules!
An interesting story indeed, chronicled here and here...
More:Thoughts from the young man who discovered this document:
We’re all for ”right-sizing” and reforming state government, but the blatantly partisan nature of what this measure does to make that happen in disturbing. The redistricting provision, for example: A truly fair way would be to have a Senate with a representative from every county, and a House that is districted based on population, not along partisan lines as proposed by RMGN. Yes this would create a larger Senate, but at least it would be fair and reasonable.
The proposed Executive Branch cuts appear to be a response to the absence of a strong candidate to succeed Gov. Granholm. The cuts in the Judiciary are a blatant response to the strict constructionist court Michigan currently enjoys. The only “non-GOP” Justice position proposed for removal is a new appointee of the Bush Administration who is moving to the federal bench anyway.
And more: Some more technical analysis of the document at the Mackinac Center...
The conversation bothers me at the same time it fascinates me. It strikes me that what I am auditing is not so much "the banality of evil," but "the banality of sedition;" a banality we see acted out daily on our television screens and on the op-ed pages of our newspapers.
The banality of sedition is now so well established that it is, well, banal and goes forward without a great deal of remark or trouble. In the last few years, the phrase that has arisen to describe this phenomenon is "The Culture of Treason." I'm not sure who originated the phrase, but its use is proliferating across the Internet for the reason that all such phrases proliferate when the time is ripe; it somehow rings true.
Ace has a very good list of things that the MSM has "decided" for us about the Obama!/Jeremiah Wright mess:
Obama's 20 year political partnership with Wright may raise questions about his judgment, but it is wrongful for his political opponents to raise such questions in campaign ads. Some questions, it seems, are properly raised, but silently, in deep personal meditation, perhaps on an alpine hill while reading Rilke. Certainly we do not need to audibly ask questions about a presidential candidate. That's just hurtful and corrosive of our political process, which relies, at its core, of utter trust in our political leaders without question.
The whole Wright thing - or more specifically, the way that Obama has responded to the whole Wright thing - disgusts me. Barack Obama is lying when he says he didn't know about Jeremiah Wright's extreme views. You don't sit under the pastorate of a man for 20 years without getting to know that person's beliefs pretty well. And Wright is no shrinking violet, obviously. In the end, all of this puts the lie to the stupid spin that Obama is a "post-racial" candidate. Just the opposite - he's the racial candidate.
As for Wright, his teachings are a disgusting perversion of Christianity. Christianity is not a political religion. Christianity should, however, influence politics. But not the other way around, which is what Wright and his fellow Black Liberation Theologians do by viewing their "Christianity" through a purely political lens.
I've been studying Matthew at bible study this year, and it seems to me that the Black Liberation Theologians make the same error that the Jews of Jesus' time did, in that they both want Jesus to be a political revolutionary. To be sure, Jesus' teachings have consequences for how his followers should view the political realm, and over time they did lead to revolutionary changes in how nations were governed. But Jesus isn't a political figure. He transcends politics. To reduce him to the level of a political revolutionary denies him the honor that he truly deserves, and ultimately denies us the true meaning of his life and teachings - which leaves us in peril of missing out on the gift of salvation that he offers. My hope is that Wright will realize the error of his ways before it's too late.
Who's bitter? It ain't Americans, according to Mark Steyn:
Europeans did “vote for their own best interests” — i.e., cradle-to-grave welfare, 35 hour work-weeks, six weeks of paid vacation, etc — and as a result they now face a perfect storm of unsustainable entitlements, economic stagnation, and declining human capital that’s left them so demographically beholden to unassimilable levels of immigration that they’re being remorselessly Islamized with every passing day. We should thank God (if you’ll forgive the expression) that America’s loser gun-nuts don’t share the same sophisticated rational calculation of “their best interests” as Thomas Frank, Obama, too many Democrats and the European political establishment.
Randi Rhodes agrees with Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro on everything - abortion, health care, climate change, you name it. Yet the first is "a f***ing whore" and the second is "David Duke in drag" merely because they disagree on which Democratic senator would make the best president.
The pillars of American liberalism — the Democratic party, the universities, and the mass media — are obsessed with biological markers, most particularly race and gender. They have insisted, moreover, that pedagogy and culture and politics be just as seized with the primacy of these distinctions and with the resulting “privileging” that allegedly haunts every aspect of our social relations.
They have gotten their wish. This primary campaign represents the full flowering of identity politics. It’s not a pretty picture. Geraldine Ferraro says Obama is only where he is because he’s black. Professor Orlando Patterson says the 3 A.M. phone call ad is not about a foreign policy crisis but a subliminal Klan-like appeal to the fear of “black men lurking in the bushes around white society.”
Good grief. The optimist will say that when this is over, we will look back on the Clinton-Obama contest, and its looming ugly endgame, as the low point of identity politics, and the beginning of a turning away. The pessimist will just vote Republican.
The British government has cleared the way for husbands with multiple wives to claim welfare benefits for all their partners, fueling growing controversy over the role of Islamic Shariah law in the nation's cultural and legal framework.
Bigamy is outlawed in Britain, but authorities have never prosecuted Muslim men who had legally married more than one woman abroad and continued to live with them after immigrating. Shariah permits men to have up to four wives at one time.
Now, after a review that began in November 2006, a panel of four government departments has decided that all the wives of a Muslim man may collect state benefits, provided that the marriages took place in a country where multiple spouses are legal.
Neither the review nor the decision was announced publicly, and their discovery by newspapers late last month triggered an uproar in the largely Christian nation — a fury exacerbated by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams' remark last week that some aspects of Islamic law could be embraced within Britain's legal system.
Hat tip to Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, who comments:
The Left seems to believe that legalizing polygamy, or polyamory as they prefer to call it, will result in a Marin County Hippie Love Fest with all the Birkenstocked commune members sharing household and childcare tasks and getting along nicely. But once multiple marriages are sanctioned by the state, there will be no stopping Muslim-style polygamy, which, will not be, shall we say, a Hippie Love Fest. Polygamy as practiced in the Muslim world is a not a pro-woman institution. And because Muslim-style polygamy will certainly produce more children than the typical Leftist group marriage, it will not take long for Sharia-style polygamy to crowd out feminist-style polygamy.
Syed Soharwardy has dropped his "human rights" complaint against Ezra Levant, who had the temerity to engage in free speech in a (supposedly) western nation. This isn't really a victory, as Soharwardy will not face any legal repercussions for his illiberal abuse of the system. That is, unless Levant gets his way:
I understand that Soharwardy has an Op-Ed in tomorrow's Herald in which he effectively admits his complaint was motivated by Saudi-style censorship, not any Canadian belief in human rights. In other words, he admits what I've alleged all along: he was hijacking a secular "human rights" commission for his radical Islamo-fascist agenda. But now he wants us all to pretend he didn't.
Well, back in the land of real laws and real rules of court, there's a tort called "abuse of process", and Soharwardy has just admitted to it.
For two years, this corrupt, radical imam has hunted me using the resources of the taxpayers of Alberta for the "thought crime" of publishing a cartoon he didn't like. I had a preliminary discussion with my lawyer today. My aim is to file an abuse of process claim in the Court of Queen's Bench within the month. Whether or not I sue the commission itself, and its inquisitor Shirlene McGovern, is something I haven't discussed yet with my lawyers.
When the chief complainant in a two-year censorship exercise admits the whole thing was improper, an abuse of process suit is not just about recouping my losses. It's about holding a little fascist, and the government agency he hijacked, to account, and having grown-ups -- that is, real judges in real courts -- tell them that what they've been doing is morally and legally wrong.
Have at 'em, Ezra. Make sure the Canadian authorities go on record, one way or another, as to whether freedom of speech and freedom of thought are "peculiarities of American law" or the natural rights of Canadians as well.
He's started a Union of Bloggers to help defend bloggers against bogus defamation lawsuit threat (in Canada, anyway) and is personally defending a blogger who goes by the handle Blazing Catfur(Nice!) against one such bogus claim:
I contacted Kinsella to advise him that I was legal counsel for Blazing Catfur. I didn't expect what came next.
First, Kinsella demanded to know if I was licensed to practise law in Ontario. I thought it was a trick question: all Canadian lawyers now have the right to practise law across the country. I thought Kinsella was just joking around, but he wasn't -- he genuinely didn't know that, and he told me he was going to immediately (it was Sunday night, if I recall) write a letter to the Law Society to put a stop to my shenanigans!
Interprovincial mobility is probably the single largest change to the practise of Canadian law since law firms were allowed to advertise; the fact that Kinsella didn't know that -- and even doubted me when I gently broke the news to him -- was stunning. I'm guessing the guy doesn't do a lot of law, though he talks a good game to bloggers.
One of those fun posts to read, that's for sure...
I keep getting comments about Pulitzer Prize Nominee Jonah Goldberg! Unfortunately for my pals from Kos, I have deleted all but one. And I will continue deleting them. I will delete any comment suggesting that Jonah Goldberg is not a Pulitzer Prize Nominee. Based on the merits of the comment? No, based on the fun. I'm considering changing my policy and referring to him as "THREE TIME PULITZER PRIZE WINNER JONAH GOLDBERG." That will ruin a few Kos Kid diapers.
One sad little nut comments over and over, with the full knowledge that his comments will be deleted. He thinks I see the comments, and that they make me cry. Unfortunately, he does not realize that I only see a few words in the Haloscan approval window. So I have no idea what he has been trying to tell me.
It's a wonderfully asymmetrical situation. He reads absolutely everything I write about Pulitzer Prize Nominee Jonah Goldberg, but I have no idea what he says about me. It's a good system. I like it.
Jonah Goldberg notes this particularly thick and rich passage of media gushing over Obama and the "Kennedy legacy":
“With a voice filled with vigor and that unmistakable cadence, Ted Kennedy reached back to the 1960s and said the same sense of possibility and hope that carried his brother to the White House had found a new standard bearer....In the civic religion that is Democratic politics, the most treasured covenant was passed to the young Senator from Illinois.”
That almost qualifies as public indecency, doesn't it? And how interesting to see Democratic politics referred to as a "civic religion." That'll go a long way toward giving you a sense of what the Dems see as the role of the state. Liberal Fascism, indeed...
