Adam Yoshida 2.0 (Now With Comments)

America - Deranged Protest at Military Funeral

2005-06-21T05:21:00.000-06:00

Given that the esteemed Mr Yoshida hasn't posted for another fortnight, it's probably time to start casting around for new contenders for the crown of Stupidest Right-Wing Blogger...

...and Marc of the USS Neverdock is going to take some beating after coming up with this doozy.

Given the lively discussion that this has spawned (178 at the time of writing), any guesses as to how long it's going to take before he does a Yoshida and switches them off?

No Bias Here, No Sir

2005-06-07T19:33:00.000-06:00

ABC News Headline: Poll: Bush Performance Ratings Plummet

ABC News story.

What they don't mention is that his approval rating actually went up from the last ABC News/Washington Post poll - from 47% to 48%.

In fact, for all the talk about approval ratings, Bush's ratings are pretty much exactly where they were right before he, you know, won re-election. In Gallup, for example, the numbers are exactly the same.

On Deep Throat

2005-06-03T22:16:00.000-06:00

It took me a few days to get together my thoughts about the revelation of Deep Throat. My first reaction was anger - but then it struck me that it was rather uncharitable (and probably unnecessary) to wish a swift death upon a senile 91 year-old man. My second reaction was indifference - it's all so long ago, well before I was even born. My third reaction was to return to my first - whatever this man is today does not change what he was and what he did. Whoever W. Mark Felt is today, I hate him for what he did and I wish him, and his family which hails him as a hero for what he did, nothing but the worst.

Of course, I'm sure to be taken to task for that by that certain percentage of the population who believes that hatred is an unnatural emotion and that, somehow, God demands we forgive those who not only fail to repent their sins - but who seek to profit from them. Decent people have every reason to hate W. Mark Felt and what he did. They have every reason to hate a man who can probably be held directly responsible for many of the ills which befell this country in the last three decades.

Was W. Mark Felt, as the media has virtually unanimous claimed, simply a deeply devoted patriot? It seems unlikely.

After all, at around the same time as he was snitching on President Nixon, he himself was authorizing illegal break-ins. This is a crime for which he was later convicted before being pardoned by President Reagan. So, it hardly seems likely that he was so terribly offended by the idea of an illegal break-in that his conscience simply wouldn't let him keep his damned mouth shut.

Frankly, that pardon really bothers me. What do you think the odds are that President Reagan would have granted such a pardon had we known then who he really was? I feel safe in saying that the odds of his being granted such a pardon would have been rather low. For all I'm concerned, he deserved to go to the gallows for what he did.

It wasn't "patriotism". It was that Felt was angry off that he wasn't made Director of the FBI and so he started leaking profusely. That's not patriotism - that's just throwing a hissy fit.

Some have sought to avoid (or respond to) condemnation of Felt by minimizing the extent of his crimes. That just won't wash - he and his actions are ultimately central to the exposure of Watergate.

Had those two young reporters at the Post not had a highly-placed confidential source, how long would they have been able to follow the story? Felt may not have provided them with the tips to set them off on the trail, but he certainly provided them with a way of hang a variety of small and often confusing clues together.

And what evil hath Mr. Felt wrought?

Without Watergate, there'd have been no defeat in Vietnam. Absent what happened to Nixon, the Congress wouldn't have been able to cut off aid to the South Vietnamese. A free South Vietnam would endure to the present day. Absent the fall of South Vietnam, Pol Pot would probably have never been able to take over Cambodia and murder millions there.

Without Watergate there'd have been no Jimmy Carter and, hence, no Iranian Revolution (or at least none like we've known). It took a leader of special incompetence to lose Iran as Carter did. Without Carter in the White House, there'd probably have been no Soviet invasion of Afghanistan either. It's questionable if, without those events, there'd ever have been a rise of Islamism like we have seen. Almost certainly, there'd have been no 9-11.

Without Watergate, there probably wouldn't have been an Iran-Contra: because, at heart, Iran-Contra was simply a Democratic effort to recapture glory days of Watergate. And without Watergate and Iran-Contra there'd probably have been no Clinton Impeachment which was, at least in part, vengeance for those earlier events. The whole of the nation's political culture would be different (and probably better) as a result.

And what was it all for? Was Watergate so bad?

Not really. It wasn't much different than anything that past national leaders had done and it was motivated by a sincere impulse - to defend the nation against war opponents who were behaving traitorously and basically fighting upon the side of the enemy.

Anyone who can get some distance from the subject (and examine an unbiased account or two of the situation) can easily get to the place where Watergate does not bother them. It was really a minor affair - stupid to be sure - not something to bring down a President and send him off in disgrace.

The ironic thing is that, ultimately, it seems that Nixon wasn't paranoid after all: they were really out to get him. The media, the establishment, the liberals, and the bureaucrats -they all engaged in a vast conspiracy with a single purpose: to get Richard Milhous Nixon.

Step back and look at Watergate. It's a textbook example of a Witch Hunt. Forget McCarthy - if you want to see a Witch Hunt, look at Watergate.

McCarthy went after actual enemies of the United States and of the Constitution. And he did so by legal means. He did so against vast opposition from the establishment. He didn't seek to deprive anyone of their political rights, he merely opposed subversives in the government.

Compare that with the actions of Nixon's opponents. They illegally leaked information in order to create a frenzy. They used distorted information, and at that time nearly unlimited influence of the mainstream media, in an effort to turn the public against a President that they had just overwhelmingly supported. They used the threat of draconian jail sentences to turn people against the President in their efforts to get Nixon. They used every means within their power, both legal and otherwise, in their effort to get President Nixon.

Whenever I think of Richard Nixon, I become tremendously sad. Here's a perfect example of a good man - a moral man -literally destroyed by the evil and insidious power of the left. A leader who always sought to do the best for his country brought low, and nearly hounded into his grave, by the treason-loving left. What a terrible fate to befall such a great man.

What a tragedy it is that a drug-abusing adulterer like John F. Kennedy is remembered as a sainted martyr while Richard Nixon, a man whose struggle for his country's good lasted his whole life, will be reviled by generations of schoolchildren who will be indoctrinated with lies about an evil President and crusading reporters.

So it is that I cannot find it in my heart to forgive W. Mark Felt for his crimes or to wish him well. So far as I'm concerned, he can go straight to hell and, with any luck he'll be getting there sooner rather than later.

Rave reviews

2005-05-29T07:40:00.000-06:00

Well, it's now been two weeks since Adam last posted, and still not a peep from the great man...

...so to keep you entertained, here's Kewpid's rave review of Adam's literary masterwork, The Northern Abyss ("If you have lots of free time, are politically inclined and in need of a laugh" is a money quote if ever I heard one), and an appraisal of his last post from Badtux the Snarky Penguin:

Confused Wanna-be-White Dude (Adam Yoshida) is shuddering in fear of slanty-eyed Asians and was last spotted sobbing, curled up in the fetal position in a corner of his mother's basement, because someone hurt his feelings by pointing out that *he* was a slanty-eyed Asian...

Adam on France

2005-05-28T08:19:00.000-06:00

As France prepares to vote on whether or not to ratify the proposed European Union Constitution, here's Adam's prediction of what the country will be like in 2037:

Napoleon Muhammad: The 'Emperor' of the Islamic Republic of France is a distant relation of the original Bonaparte- a half-French, half-Algerian who was initially elected as the President of the Fifth Republic in 2037, the new Napoleon fused together France's rising Islamist tide with a growing and virulent strain of ultra-rightism. Though, like most French politicians, in his initial years he rose to power with the support of Socialists desperate for Moslem votes and so willing to look the other way as to the more unseemly aspects of their new friends' views, he gained much greater heights as French ultra-nationalists began to embrace Islamic values as the last bulwark against socialism, social liberalism, and the growth of the European Super-State.

Under his reign, France has both officially become an Islamic state and become a dictatorship.

Read the rest, and marvel at Adam's uncanny understanding of the French mindset. Or his ability to pull stuff out of his ass and convert it into prose. Or whatever.

While we're waiting...

2005-05-27T03:31:00.000-06:00

...for Adam to give us his latest thoughts on what is the greatest threat to Western civilisation since the last one, let's try and imagine his reaction to current events on the basis of previous statements.

First up, Lord Conrad Black has been caught on camera removing boxes of documents from his office despite a court order to hand them over. This was Adam's take on Black's activities a couple of months ago:

Right now, the company has been essentially stolen from Black by a renegade board of directors as Hollinger International. Whatever abuses Black may or may not have committed, strike me as immaterial in view of the fact that he owns a controlling interest in the company. It's his company; he ought to have a perfect to do with it pretty much as he wishes.

Of course, that's a little extreme. And so, I suppose, were a few of Black's actions here and there. Using $9 Million in company money to buy FDR memorabilia does, admittedly, seem a little over-the-top. But, then again, as I've said: no Black, no Hollinger, so who are the people who bought in to complain? If you buy into a company owned by someone like Conrad Black, you should expect them to behave like Conrad Black.

('A Great Man, Much Maligned', March 23, 2005)

Fighting China: Full Spectrum Warfare

2005-05-16T20:39:00.000-06:00

In June's issue of The Atlantic Monthly Robert D. Kaplan argues what I have long asserted; namely that the primary long-term threat to American strategic interests is posed not by Islamic terrorists but by the rise of an increasingly powerful and aggressive Chinese superpower whose ambition to displace the United States as the world's leading power is as obvious as it is frightening.

Of course, Kaplan focuses on an area different than one I've talked about. He makes the point (correctly, I assess) that our conflict with the Chinese is much more likely to take the form of a Second Cold War than it is the form of an immediate or imminent hot one. As I've long asserted, the real danger isn't that the Chinese will start a war with the United States; it's that they'll leverage their other advantages in order to beat the United States without firing a shot.

The coming Cold War with China is, in many respects, likely to be more dangerous than that with the Soviet Union. Unlike the Russians, China is on relatively sound economic footing and possesses a political system that appears to be mostly stable. In general people, if given a choice between prosperity and freedom, will opt for the former. While democratic agitation continues on the margins in China, I don't think it very likely that the Chinese people will choose to overthrow a system of relatively moderate authoritarianism which has brought them a level of affluence unprecedented in the history of their nation with a less stable (and likely less effective) democratic system simply because we of the West think that democracy is a positive universal ideal. The Chinese are a practical people and will, in my assessment, stick with what works over what might work.

What this means to the United States, in practical terms, is that fighting a Cold War against the Chinese requires a response far more comprehensive than that which was used in fighting the Soviet Union. It is fortunate, therefore, that the relative power of the United States has greatly increased in the years since the opening stages of the First Cold War.

In consider the Chinese Question, it is worth noting that, at this point, the US and Chinese economies are so completely interlinked that cutting off trade between them would be virtually impossible and, in any case, completely economically undesirable. This is likely to complicate things as a US-China Cold War is therefore likely to feature both military and economic "nuclear options."

When considering this, it's worthwhile noting that, in fact, this is a major advantage to the United States. Though the severe recession (and possible Depression) which would accompany any cut-off of US-China trade would certainly be devastating to whichever party happened to be in power at the time, it would be a shock that the American political system would weather with relative ease. If China's political system, whose credibility is based entirely upon its economic success, could do the same is, I think, an open question.

This makes it very unlikely, for example, that the Chinese would ever actually dump the large quantities of American cash and bonds that they are presently holding onto with the desire of harming the US economy. While such a move would certainly cause severe damage to the American economy, US retaliation would equally devastate the Chinese. And, in such a situation, it would be virtually certain that, however bad the subsequent dislocations might be, in a decade or two there would still be a President in the White House and a Congress in the Capitol. Whether there would still be a Communist Party ruling China after such a crisis is much harder to assess.

In assessing the shape of any conflict with China (cold or otherwise) we must approach it from more than simply a military standpoint. The basic military dimensions of a war with China are relatively clear. A war against China is primarily a job for the Navy, with supporting roles for the Marine Corps and the Air Force.

Anything other than small-scale special operations on the Chinese mainland would, literally, be suicidal. The Army might play a role in defending, for example, Central Asia against Chinese aggression but, frankly, the logistics of anything other than a limited engagement are an absolute nightmare.

In fighting China, we'd have to rely upon the Navy to first destroy China's fleet and prevent any advance into the Pacific and, second, to clear the way for air and missile strikes against the Chinese mainland itself while stopping most of China's overseas trade and cutting off her energy supplies. This is important, but it is probably not enough to defeat China in and of itself.

We need to look at other theatres of operations in combating the Chinese.

First, cyber-warfare is likely to be a major component in any long-term conflict with the Chinese. China's society is increasingly internet-dependant, just as American society is. This means that the United States will have to continue and accelerate the development of a robust cyber-warfare capability.

A lot of people underestimate the usefulness of cyber-warfare. It isn't, to pick a few examples, simply about hacking into enemy computers or attacking websites. Cyber-warfare is a deadly combat technique with real-world applications. For example, a low-level cyber attack might disable the elevators in an extremely tall building of freeze every ATM machine in an area on a payday. A higher level attack might totally disable Air Traffic Control systems on a busy day or, alternately, hijack those systems and use them to intentionally direct planes into one another. They might even be used in concert with other methods of war. For example, a limited missile attack might be followed up upon by using cyber-warfare methods to disable every hospital near the attack or, alternately, to misdirect emergency vehicles and create massive traffic jams. Or, resources permitting, perhaps both.

Similarly, we must seek to attain command of the cultural battlefield. In the last few years I've been increasingly alarmed by the seemingly rising popularity of Chinese culture within the West. For example, the film Hero was both fairly popular in North America and a propaganda film produced with the support of Chinese authorities. While there's little we can do to discourage this trend, we can seek to project it in reverse. During the early stages of the Cold War (and even later) the CIA funded a number of publications and other items designed to undermine communism. We might consider repeating this policy, with the US Government covertly offering aid to those who produce films which might be used to subvert Chinese culture.

On a similar note, in working against the Chinese, we ought also to consider the utility of working with many people who we would not care to deal with at home. Let's face it: there aren't likely to be many Jefferson-spouting Democrats sprouting in China anytime soon and working with violent elements (which, admittedly, I have advocated at times in the past) is likely to be counter-productive. The people who might prove most useful to us are Chinese agitators, especially of the leftist sort. As I've pointed out elsewhere, the blessings of China's boom have been spread extremely unevenly and, though I have no particular objection to this, I'm certainly not above hoping that it might be exploited.

Frankly (and I doubt if I'm the only one who feels this way) I think that there's nothing better we could do in order to slow China's growth than to give them the twin gifts of environmental activists and labour union organizers of some considerable talent and zeal.

The awakening dragon is the greatest threat any of us has ever known. In order to combat it we must contemplate and use all options, not only the most obvious.

The Quandary of the Republican Majority

2005-05-07T23:57:00.000-06:00

It strikes me as notable that, in nearly fifty years of Democratic control of the House of Representatives (1947-1995) Democrats only had two major bursts of liberal activism, one in the early years of the Johnson Administration and another with the election of 1974's "Watergate Congress." That isn't to say, of course, that the Democrats didn't get anything done during the rest of the time, but it is to say that they didn't do very much memorable. Certainly, they didn't enact a good deal of their platform most of the rest of the time.

Running Congress is mostly a matter of simply managing day-to-day events. Real activity is only possible under certain specific conditions which, in essence, are either a national crisis or a smashing election which delivers one party a supermajority. The reason for this is simple: more often than not, on many issues, the titular majority is not the effective majority. That is to say, on an issue to issue basis, the majority party often does not command the loyalty of a majority of the Congress.

During Democratic days, this was the result of a coalition between conservative Democrats and Republicans. Today that coalition is between liberal Republicans and the Democrats. Let's face it: Bill Frist may be the Majority Leader and Ted Stevens may sit in the President Pro Tempore's Chair, but it would be a silly and gross exaggeration to claim that the Republicans really control the Senate when they get up in the morning. In reality, control of the Senate is being contested on a continual basis as the loyalties of the disloyal Republicans (Chafee, McCain, Snowe, and Collins most prominent among them) are tested.

Frankly, this is a natural outgrowth of being in the majority. When you're in the minority, you can (as much of the Democratic Party now is) be dedicated to ideological purity. You can demand total loyalty on the issues because, frankly, what does it matter if you lose one Senator? You're not in the majority anyways. More to the point, most self-proclaimed "moderates" tend to be oversized weathervanes and always on the move. If you're in the majority, you can be guaranteed that you're party will soon be filled with trimmers and opportunists.

It doesn't take a genius to see what's happened: we're basically in the same situation, in terms of party alignment, as we were in the early 1960's, only with the party labels reversed. The Republicans are the big-tent party, with a certain ideological tilt, but with an overriding commitment to remaining in government. The Democrats are the minority party, increasingly fearful of becoming a permanent minority, with an increasingly ideological base and an establishment which, while it's willing to pander to that base, fears that it will soon be conquered by it.

There's still some real hope for those who'd like to see the Republican agenda advanced. It's not just over the horizon in 2006, but three and a half years away in November of 2008.

Hillary Clinton is running for President with a plan to move to the center, relying upon the anger of partisan Democrats to permit her to do this. I don't think that they're going to do it. Instead, I think that the Democratic base is going to demand an ultra-liberal candidate in 2008. They're in the mood for a Democratic Goldwater, and they're going to get one.

Republicans, on the other hand, are increasingly pragmatic. Though I'd personally prefer to have a conservative like Jeb Bush for President, I think that the GOP will go with a "moderate". If I had to pick out three potential front runners for the Republican nomination in 2008, I'd pick Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. Any of the three, paired up with a strong conservative (Rick Santorum, Sam Brownback, and Tim Pawlenty all seem like possible picks) would be a nearly unbeatable candidate.

In fact, I'd argue that a popular moderate Republican President might be the best thing which could possibly happen for conservative Republicans, especially Giuliani or McCain. Let's explore the scenario for a minute.

Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that 2006 is a wash. And that, in 2008, we end up with McCain-Brownback versus, say, Dean-Feingold or something like that, with the latter running on a far-left platform. Not only does McCain win in a walk, but he carries with him a massive Congressional contingent. One which doesn't quite share all of his views.

Here's the thing: even the professed platforms of most moderate Republicans (and certainly that of John McCain) are far to the right of what's actually coming out of Washington. Paradoxically, electing an Eisenhower Republican as President could give the Congress a short at bringing in some truly conservative reforms.

Of course, it could all end in tears also. That's the risk that we take.

But that's what we who seek truly conservative reforms must do: we've got to look to deliver a short-term blow to the enemy of such force that it gives us time to execute a program of real reform. We can't do it in a Congress where, for all of our titles, we lack the effective control to actually govern on our own.

It's worth remembering, most of the things that an important Congress does in a burst never get undone. Republicans have yet to dismantle most of the Great Society. Democrats never really undid the things that the post-war Republican Congress did. The GOP didn't undo most of the New Deal. Etc.

China: Where Everything Must Go Perfectly

2005-04-29T00:11:00.000-06:00

World commodity prices increase as Chinese and Indian factories hum. 480,000 US tax returns were prepared in India this year. Venezuela signs an oil deal with China. China moves towards buying Noranda, Canada's largest mining company. Anti-Japanese riots spread through Chinese cities, probably instigated by the Chinese government, only to be suppressed by the same. China passes an "anti-secession law" aimed at Taiwan. Altogether each is, in and of itself, not a cause for alarm. Put together, they create a case for concern.

China's experiment is obviously very successful, for now. However, it carries with it the dangers inherent in any enterprise where everything must go perfectly. The Chinese experiment is notably un-Chinese in its approach. It is not cautious, it is a massive exercise in unchecked creative destruction. That's all well and good, but, given the methods by which it has been carried out, it also carries with it certain dangers.

The more I study the subject the more I am convinced that the position of China's rulers is a lot more fragile than it would seem before the world. Consider: China has at least 1.3 Billion people. How many of those people are enjoying the fruits of China's new prosperity?

How many truly "middle class" people are there in China? How many are there likely to be in a few years? A hundred million? Two hundred million?

The United States is a country of economic inequality, yes. Some inequality is good. But China is increasingly a country of gross economic inequality. China is a country divided between a small number of wealthy people and a significantly larger number of much poorer people.

Is China's boom sustainable? The Chinese boom is premised, in essence, upon the exploitation of ultra-cheap and hard-working laborers who move from the country-side into the cities. Some may talk about China's increasing levels of education and so on but, at its core, it remains based upon that inexorable fact.

In this China's boom differs from the Indian boom. India's boom, while it also features the use of low-wage labour, also features the export of knowledge and innovation jobs to India – something which, upon reflection, probably makes the Indians are more dangerous long-term economic competitor than the Chinese.

However, the flaws of the Chinese boom pose dangers which we haven't talked about very much. Let's look at what's really going on for a moment.

China has an economic boom which has exacerbated domestic political tensions at a time when modern communications result in a situation where dissent and protest can be more easily organized. The Chinese government is fully aware that, were they forced to put down protests by violence, it would destroy the international image that they've been working hard to foster. More importantly, it could well destroy major parts of their trade, especially as other competitors in the Developing World work to usurp their competitive advantage.

The Party seeks to redirect dissent against certain convenient targets: Japan and the United States. The Party seeks to sublimate dissenting urges into a form of hyper-nationalism.

In discussing high commodity prices, we don't consider a key point: they're likely to hurt the Chinese just as much as they're hurting us. The Chinese are, in proportion to their population and their production, short on resources: and they don't have much choice but to buy them where they can.

That's the point of China seeking to make deals with Venezuela and trying to buy Noranda. They need to secure access to resources which they might conceivably, though various means, have steady access to at preferential prices.

It is here that the dangers truly develop. We have a China which is dependent upon the massive import of commodities abroad in order to keep its economy expanding at the rate that it has to in order to accommodate the surging tides of humanity streaming from the farms to the cities. It has a population whose rebellious tendencies have been diverted into hyper-nationalism.

The Chinese experiment appears to be running in a fail-deadly mode. It takes only one thing to go truly wrong for everything to go wrong. A surge in world commodity prices (above the one we've already seen), particularly fuel prices, could make home production more economical than production abroad. An economic slowdown could lead to massive dissent, which could lead to violence, which would massively disrupt the world economy.

Of course, there's a worse danger. If China can't get resources, they might just decide to take them. For all that I wish the United States would, if necessary, do the same, I much doubt if the American people could, under any but the most extreme of circumstances, be convinced to accept the doctrines which I have earlier advocated. But the Chinese people, in their hyper-nationalist frenzy? Who knows?

I can easily envision a scenario whereby the Chinese, under increasing political pressure, with worsening economic conditions, and with a hyper-nationalist population, decide to roll the dice on the recovery of their "lost territories."

We'll just have to wait and see, I suppose.

The Jihad Against Tom Delay (Part One)

2005-04-22T00:16:00.000-06:00

In all of the bantering back and forth about the future of House Majority Leader Tom Delay one vital question seems to be increasingly forgotten: just what is the man accused of? The most you get from most Democrats is vague blather about Delay being "unethical" and, in general, you'll hear even less from the GOP.

The central accusation against Delay involves a political action Committee that he controls, the Texans for a Republican Majority. Under Texas law, corporate contributions to political candidates are banned. So far as I can tell, his PAC moved along the edge of the law, much like most of the Democratic 527's did in the last Presidential campaign. For example, fundraisers affiliated with TRM solicited money to be sent to specific candidates and so on.

It's all close to the line, and perhaps over it from time to time, but it's pretty standard stuff so far as political fundraising and spending goes. Most of it is tiny, in any case, and it's doubtful if any of it directly involved Delay. The whole amount spent by the PAC was reportedly $250,000. If we can believe that a certain Senator from New York didn't know anything about a fundraiser where literally millions were concealed, it's not a far stretch to believe that a few thousand dollars (with $1200 to pay for lawyers for one Texas State Representative, which isn't really a campaign contribution in any sense of the word, being the largest individual sum I've seen mentioned) might be spent somewhere without the direct knowledge of the House Majority Leader.

All of the "illegality" of this has come into public awareness mostly as a result of the actions of Travis County DA Ronnie Earle who is, so far as I can tell, something of a rogue prosecutor with a long habit of prosecuting Republicans under strange circumstances, most notably his strange attempt to prosecute Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson for, of all things, assault. Just coincidentally this occurred during the middle of her re-election campaign. Of course, as certain liberal Democrats are fond of pointing out, he's prosecuted many Democrats as well. But, of course, it'd probably be more helpful (in view of the organization of Texas politics until very recently) to have an ideological breakdown of those Democrats.

The rest of the charges against Delay are, if anything, even flimsier. The newest revelation is that he's employed his wife and daughter in various capacities on his campaign staff over the last four years totaling around $500,000. That's a lot of money until you recall that it involves two people stretched over four years. It comes, overall, to something like $60,000 per person per year. Not unreasonable for senior-level jobs at a Political Action Committee. And it's a common enough practice.

I know, I know, it's a horrible affront to democracy, nepotism is. I mean, imagine, if we let Delay get away with this the Senate Majority Leader might have his wife working as a lobbyist! It's not like Democratic Congressman Pete Stark started paying his wife $2400 a month for consulting right after she had twins, or Joe Lieberman had three different family members on his campaign payroll.

Other major complaints against Delay fall into the narrow range between the laughable and the moronic.

For example, Delay is accused of going on junkets overseas. I know, we're all shocked at the idea that a Congressman would go on a junket. In other news: there's gambling in casinos.

Most of the rest of the accusations against Delay seem to have been mostly pushed by defeated Texas Democratic Congressman Chris Bell, who field a series of ethics complaints against Delay last year, presumably as a result of redistricting rage. These included that Delay promised to endorse a Congressman's son for office if the Congressman voted for a bill (politicians trade votes for support! Unthinkable!) and that Delay asked the FAA to track a plane which was fleeing Texas with Democratic state legislators onboard.

So: why are the Democrats so determined to defeat Tom Delay?

It's simple: he gets things done. He's a fighter. He's the sort of man that the Republicans need.

Martin: Please, Don’t Kill Me

2005-04-21T21:57:00.000-06:00

Frankly, it was only shocking in dullness. Paul Martin goes up before the nation and says to the opposition, in essence (and to quote a truly great leader), "please, don't kill me."

Thankfully, I doubt if the Canadian people are in a merciful mood towards the Liberal Party at this point. This stunt is only likely to worsen Liberal misfortunes, particularly since it ended up giving the opposition nearly half an hour of free time in prime-time to attack the government.

Dumb, dumb, dumb, on their part.

Larry Summers

2005-04-19T19:52:00.000-06:00

I haven't really commented on the whole Larry Summers fight, but I was recently contacted by some people who are selling "Viva Larry Summers" t-shirts and asked me to mention them and their site.

I've done them one better, I've ordered one.

Of course, these shirts also offer a great chance to explain to people just what happened, seeing as the most common reaction to those who come up to you while you're wearing one is certian to be, "who's Larry Summers?"

In the Land of the Excitable and Irrational

2005-04-16T00:23:00.000-06:00

I was reading a favorite message board the other day and, after reading for a while, I thought to myself, "If I were as jumpy as these people, I'd have had six heart attacks by now instead of four." The political internet is the land of the excitable, and I know that I'm as susceptible to it as anyone, it's a place where politicians careers are declared dead eight thousand times each day and where the smallest of incidents or the tiniest of setbacks can morph into the dawning of the End Times.

Take, for example, the drop in the Dow on Friday. Rational people, I think, understand that Stock Markets go both up and down. If they didn't, they wouldn't serve their purpose. Sane people, I think, realize that the Dow can be down a hundred on Friday and up two hundred on Monday or, well, whatever. But the internet is not conducive to sanity.

I couldn't count the number of times last yeah when I saw either Bush or Kerry proclaimed as "finished" (admittedly, several hundred of the times for the latter spewed from my own keyboard). I can't count the number of predictions of imminent disasters that have failed to materialize.

Speculation is wonderful. We all like to speculate. But irrational speculation is dangerous. One discussion of the Dow on Friday led to, within a few posts, one individual predicting the forthcoming onset of the next Great Depression and another member wandering off into speculation about "when Bush dissolves Congress" or some other such nonsense. Such nonsense. But it's potentially deadly nonsense.

It's all well and good for people to have a simplistic view of the world. It's altogether another for them to have an entirely irrational view of the world based upon conspiracy theories and obvious falsehoods. It's even worse when people are likely to jump to, and then have reinforced by others, those same bizarre conclusions.

My advice (which I often fail to follow) is to try to emotionally distance yourself from the news. A good general rule to recall is that nothing, almost nothing at least, is as bad as it sounds or as its presented. The media will hype anything and everything.

Whenever I watch and listen to predictions from the media, I recall an episode of the Simpsons where Springfield's local News Anchor, Kent Brockman, is reporting upon the launch of a Space Shuttle carrying "Average American Astronaut" Homer Simpson. Upon seeing an ant drift by a camera with is size magnified by its position, Brockman jumps to the conclusion that the spacecraft has been, "taken over, conquered if you will, by a giant race of space ants." Within moments he is declaring that, "I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords."

I doubt if I'm the only one who has had doubts about the viability of democracy in a world where at least half the people are apparently stupid, gullible, and crazy. The internet is great for many things, but it has not been a success in improving the degree to which the average person is informed politically.

Winston Churchill is famously quoted as saying that the best argument against democracy was a five minute conversation with the average voter. I've yet to see anything to convince me that that isn't fundamentally true. Whenever I think of the average voter, I recall the woman who, in 1964, said she was voting for Lyndon Johnson because, if Barry Goldwater was elected, he was going to take away her TV. When someone then explained to her that Senator Goldwater was against the Tennessee Valley Authority, not her Television, she responded, "Well, I'm not taking any chances."

As much as I admire the President and his team, even I have to admit that there's something disturbing about them standing in front of a banner with some simplistic regurgitation of their policy scrawled across it eight thousand times ("Defending America From Foreign Aggression", "Sound Energy and Whale Oil Policy", etc.).

More on this another night.

The Illusion of Permanence

2005-04-08T21:09:00.000-06:00

I was having a conversation with a liberal friend the other day about the future. It was one of those free-ranging conversations which jump from topic to topic. At some point we drifted to the matter of social conservatism, and she asked me why I thought that people were social liberals and I responded, “They're under the sway of the illusion of the permanence of all things.”

At its core, I think, that describes the fundamental problem of all modern liberalism: it assumes that we can sit here and now and build this utopian sort of society because we have nothing but time and we have no competitors. Despite the pretensions of the left to some sort of cosmopolitan internationalism, at their core most modern liberals are inward-looking and reactionary. They believe that we can go on living as we do now forever, regardless of information to the contrary.

I'm constantly amazed by the lack of concern displayed by people who will howl for hours about the Hubbert Peak over declining fertility rates in the West. Those who accept unquestionably crackpot theories about energy which deny the ability of humanity to innovate and explore seemingly refuse to consider the consequences of a case where we will actually bump up against the tyranny of fixed numbers.

The fact that X amount of oil is pumped today is almost entirely irrelevant to what our energy needs and sources will be in two decades. The same flexibility does not extend to matters of demographics. If there are one hundred babies born into a closed community, it is mathematically impossible for there to be more than one hundred twenty year olds in that community two decades later.

Modern liberalism's fundamental delusion is that we have no need to worry about the internal strength of our society (as in its ability to produce future armies and its ability to withstand future challenges) because there are no real threats to our future.

I view moral issues as national security issues. I'm not simply opposed to gay marriage because I believe that it's an abomination against God, I'm against it because I believe that it's a threat to our future security. The advance of homosexuality and other ideologies of personal indulgence threaten our security because they will surely weaken our resolve to resist future threats.

Similarly, I'm against abortion for national security reasons. More abortions means fewer people, which means a smaller economy and fewer potential soldiers (or, alternately, more immigrants, which is also not a sustainable solution).

Our old morality was not crafted because our ancestors were prudes or bigots. It was created by people more acquainted with the dangers of the world. There's a reason why every successful civilization developed moral codes that are broadly similar.

Think about it. From Europe to the Middle East to China to Japan, what do successful societies have in common? In general, they were are patriarchal and centered upon some form of traditional family. I can't name a single one which commonly accepted practices resembling modern homosexuality. All of them tended to be religious (in some form or another) and to emphasize duty and responsibility over personal pleasure. All of them recognized and defended the concept of private property.

Were there societies that thought otherwise? Of course there were. And what became of them?

They died. They disappeared. They're gone. They were conquered by better civilizations.

The evolution of man is a process of creative destruction. Civilizations, peoples, ideas, and religions are eradicated as better ones take their place. That is how man got to where he is today, and that is how we will move forward.

This is what truly scares me about the direction in which our society is headed. This is why I have nightmares about the era of China's ascendancy. The Chinese are better at classical capitalism than we are. They're work twelve hours a day for slave wages without unions and without real regulations to hold them back. They can throw up entire cities where there were none because they're not encumbered by municipal regulations and a thousand pathetic special interest groups.

The Chinese don't have (and aren't likely to have) any ACLU to bother them, nor any effective court for them to sue in. The Chinese are free to pursue the accumulation of their own wealth and power practically free of our self-imposed restraints.

Why do we restrain ourselves so? It's simple: we're deluded. We don't understand the challenge. We don't understand the threat. We believe that our world can continue forever.

But how can our world continue in the face of a billion and a half people in China and another billion in India who will demand the same access to resources as us, the same standard of living as us: the same rights over the planet as us? How can our world endure in the face of people who can make everything that we can for a tenth of the cost and who could, if allowed to do so, consume every resource on the planet and still have excess capacity?

Our world is not permanent. Our world is dying. Our past is dissolving before our very eyes. Because of our laziness, our stupidity, and our ignorance the world of the old West is becoming a faded memory. It's becoming a nostalgic memory of by-gone days of glory.

And so what is to be done?

I don't believe we can save most of Europe. They're a dead civilization. To our descendents, a hundred or so years from now, the idea of Europe as we have known it will be as foreign as the idea of the Aztecs is to us. Europe will be something entirely different. If things continue the odds seem high that Europe will probably be divided between Moslem states and occasional enclaves of surviving European strength. Or perhaps Europe will be entirely Moslem and the surviving Europeans resettled somewhere in the United States, welcomed and loved by the people they once hated so. I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball.

But I do know Europe is dead. The very feel of the continent is one of death. Their civilization will die but probably not before we, “like the Roman, see the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”

The question now is if we can, at least, save the best part of the West: the Anglosphere. For the moment, it's an open question. We're not as far gone as Europe, but we're all headed down the road to danger at various speeds.

Only radical action can now save us from Chinese domination.

Do you think that a world dominated by China would be a place any true Westerner would want to live in? If allowed to reach their full strength, the Chinese would be much more powerful than the United States. Not only because China has a much larger population and apparently a better ability to manage them, but also because China's policies will not be restrained by the same forces as those of the United States are. China won't have any problem with simply taking the resources that they need or want. China won't be restrained from simply ordering the murder of any foreign leader that gets in their way. China won't be above simply bribing and buying foreign governments to get the sort of trade concessions that they want. The Chinese won't have any lobby groups to stop them from conducting horrible genetic experiments to remake men as they desire them to be.

There's only one way to beat China: to fight back now, and to fight like hell. That means a lot of things. It means making our society harder and tougher. For example, I think that we'd be well-served by the institution of some form of universal military service. That, I believe, would be of help to virtually everyone (myself included). But, more than that, we need to leverage our advantages.

More than anything else, that means exploiting:

1) Our cultural influence.
2) Our technological power.
3) Our economic power.
4) Our military power.

We need to work to prepare people for a long struggle against China: one at least as long as the Cold War.

We need to work to secure military domination of space and to develop other advanced technologies which might be used to great effect against the Chinese, especially unmanned planes, ballistic missile defenses, ground-penetrating nukes, and combat robots. Once we secure space, we need to develop offensive weapons which can be dropped from orbit to destroy targets on the ground in seconds. Ideally we might even place kinetic energy weapons in geosynchronous orbit over China.

We cannot simply go on believing that peace and prosperity will continue forever. To get the future we want, we're going to have to fight for it.

Zogby Gets Something Right

2005-04-05T00:24:00.000-06:00

What a different poll questions make.

Zogby (who we've all given a hard time) went back and asked some better Schaivo questions. The relevant numbers:

1) The Zogby poll found that, if a person becomes incapacitated and has not expressed their preference for medical treatment, as in Terri's case, 43 percent say "the law presume that the person wants to live, even if the person is receiving food and water through a tube" while just 30 percent disagree.

2) Another Zogby question his directly on Terri's circumstances.

"If a disabled person is not terminally ill, not in a coma, and not being kept alive on life support, and they have no written directive, should or should they not be denied food and water," the poll asked.

A whopping 79 percent said the patient should not have food and water taken away while just 9 percent said yes.

3) "When there is conflicting evidence on whether or not a patient would want to be on a feeding tube, should elected officials order that a feeding tube be removed or should they order that it remain in place," respondents were asked.

Some 18 percent said the feeding tube should be removed and 42 percent said it should remain in place.

4) When asked directly about Terri's case and told the her estranged husband Michael "has had a girlfriend for 10 years and has two children with her" 56 percent of Americans believed guardianship should have been turned over to Terri's parents while 37 percent disagreed.

A Chinese Pope?

2005-04-05T00:14:00.000-06:00

Admittedly, I'm not a Catholic, so some may question my qualifications to comment on the subject of who ought to be the next Pope. Further, I would note, that technically my opinion ought to have no weight at all, for the "election" of the Pope is theoretically an act of apostolic succession and is therefore conducted entirely by the will of God.

That being said, I'm going to offer my own suggestion. I've heard people opine that the next Pope could be African, Latin American, Italian, Eastern European and even (God forbid!) American. But there's one nationality which hasn't been discussed which ought to be: Chinese.

The situation of the Catholic Church in China is somewhat complex. There is both an "official" Church, sanctioned by the Chinese Government and an unofficial Church (which is recognized by the Vatican) which is persecuted by the state. The Pope has actually appointed a number of "Secret Cardinals" in China, using an obscure provision of Papal law.

If the Conclave is truly brave, they'll elevate one of those Cardinals to the Papacy. Can you imagine the reaction from the Chinese authorities to such a move?

Is the Hour Come at Last?

2005-04-03T10:41:00.000-06:00

Well, there's no real need for me to risk prosecution under Canadian law, so I'm not going to post what I've heard about the testimony under publication ban from the Gomery Commission, but Captain's Quarters, being under no similar threat, has proven more than able in this regard.

What does all of this mean? Has the hour come around at last, for the deliverance of God's faithful subjects in the Northern land? Is the hour now upon us?

Let's talk in generalities.

1) Can the Martin Liberals wriggle out from under this information (whatever it is) on the grounds that "it was that other lot that did all of that"?

This, I think, simply doesn't fly up to a point. If the Sponsorship Scandal involved, as we were led to believe, corruption simply for the sake of helping a few friends of the government in ad agencies, with the total being diverted back into the hands of the party being counted in the thousands, it was remotely plausible that all of it could have gone on without the notice of the Finance Minister/Top Quebec Lieutenant of the Liberal Party. It wasn't likely, but it remained within the realm of possibility.

But let us speculate, hypothetically, that this information confirms what many of us have suspected for a long time: that the involvement of the Liberal Party itself was far deeper than originally revealed.

For example: it might be possible that someone like Martin could ignore or be kept ignorant of a small-scale scam. But it doesn't strike me as at all possible that even Paul Martin could remain unaware of corruption on a much-larger scale. It's one thing to remain blissfully unaware of where a petty amount of money like $250 million is going when it's going out from the taxpayers: it's another thing altogether to be a senior Quebec Liberal politician and not be aware of what was apparently happening to that money thereafter.

2) Is this bad enough to get people to vote for the Tories or the Bloc instead of the Liberals?

Yes, I think. But, then again, I thought that the original revelations were bad enough to get people to vote for the Tories or the Bloc over the Liberals. It may well be that, in the last election, the Liberals did about as badly as they can do in the hands of an electorate which, by all appearances, is made up of a gang of Stepford Liberals.

But, do think this is bad enough to hurt the Liberals more. In a fair world, this would be enough to earn them a 1993 PC-level destruction. I don't think it will do quite that. But it'll be bad. "Vote for the crooks, not for the fascists," only works for so long and, frankly, the Tories have spent most of the time since the last election carefully moving to the left (or, if you prefer "center") on just about everything. The delusive abilities of our national media only extend so far. It's going to be increasingly hard to convince the Canadian people that the Tory proposal for a 5% increase in spending is evil, as opposed to the Liberal proposal for a 7% increase in spending, which has the sanction of the risen Christ.

In truth, it's bad enough to give me a little fear. After all, I live in British Columbia, where the provincial Liberals are the "right-wing" party. The information is, in my view, bad enough to taint the Liberal name and it does look like we're going to have nearly-simultaneous Provincial and Federal elections.

If we have an election in the near future, I expect that the Liberals won't quite suffer the fate of the PC's of 1993. But I do think that the end result will call to mind two other words: John Turner.

Turner, as you will recall, was the much-heralded successor to Pierre Trudeau. The former Finance Minister, a "moderate" by reputation, was utterly destroyed after a short time in power, largely as a result of the people's exhaustion over Liberal corruption.

I think that, in an election today, we'd be looking at either a very slight Conservative majority or a large Conservative minority. Something like 150 Tory seats, 80 Liberal seats, 60 Bloc seats, and 20 NDP seats. An election now would be very bad for the Liberals.

That's why it needs to be brought on. We need an election now. There should be no chickening out to wait for the fall. This loses urgency and its "rage factor" if we wait.

We need to hit them now. If the Bloc move for no-confidence in the government tomorrow, we need to bring the government down and go to the polls.

There Will Be War

2005-03-27T22:51:00.000-07:00

It should be clear, even to a blind man, that we're building towards something with China. China's demand for resources appears to be growing at a geometric rate. The date at which its economy is anticipated to be larger than that of the United States is forever inching forward. And, if one thing is certain, it is this: there will be war.

I don't know if it will be the nukes-flying, carriers-sinking sort of war that many of us fear in the dead of the night. But I know there will be war. More than that, I think we're already in one.

We're fighting the Chinese for the control of the world as the endgame of a process which goes back a hundred generations. China was a great power (perhaps the greatest power) before Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. Due to economic, technological, and political difficulties China fell behind in recent centuries, but now it's catching up and it is the West that is indisputably in decline.

This is a war which will decide the fate of humanity itself, for these are the generations in which man will first leave the Earth and in which the secrets of space and time will be revealed. This is the time, more than any other in all of human history, when one civilization will have the chance to truly and totally dominate the other.

Competition, especially between civilizations and great powers, is typically a zero-sum game. For someone to win, someone else to lose. Every bit of economic influence gained by China is a defeat for the West. Every word of Chinese spoken upon this Earth, every advance of Chinese culture, however small, is a defeat for the West. Every Chinese baby born to grow up to be a productive subject of China is a defeat for the West. When they win, we lose.

Here is an inalterable fact: the world can support the United States, with 5% of the world's population, consuming a quarter of the world's resources. It is physically impossible for China, with a population accounting for more than 20% of humanity, to do the same. We can find more resources, of course. But not that many more. The world's resources are capable of supporting the American people and the rest of the people of the West in their present standard of living: they are not capable of supporting the people of the West and the people of China at the same standard.

This fact, fearful and inalterable, sows the seeds of future conflict. The two nations, together with the other rising nations of the Earth, cannot possibly enjoy the standard of living that each wishes at the same time.

We cannot yield out standard of living to them. We have no reason to. China has always been an inferior nation and deserves to be. We ought not surrender, we ought not compromise. There is no rational reason for us to consider sharing with the Chinese so long as any other option remains open to us. I, for one, am not willing to surrender the least part of my standard of living to help a billion and a quarter Chinese get what they want.

In these terms, we live in a zero-sum world. For someone to win, someone else must lose. I am inalterably determined that we should lose nothing and gain everything.

Of course, it seems doubtful if nuclear war would improve our material condition, so we must consider other options. Thankfully, several flaws in China's development provide us with ample opportunity to do so.

To begin: China's political stability is not everything we believe it to be. A closer examination of modern China shows that it is a nation of two hundred million relatively well-off people and a billion who remain in terrible poverty. They are still a very primitive nation in some ways, where the use of toilet paper is considered a mark of sophistication. This can be used to our advantage.

China is terribly combustible. From time to time it's overtaken by some movement of rampaging lunatics, like the Red Guards, or the Boxers, of the rebels during the Taiping Rebellion. Some great madness sweeps across the land, consuming everything in its path. To put it mildly, the arrival of this contagion would be welcomed by myself at the present.

Of course, if it doesn't wish to come naturally, we can always help it along. For example, the Falun Gong movement could potentially be infiltrated and, with enough Western effort and money, turned violent. China also suffers from problems with its own Moslems, some effort in this area might be profitably expended as well.

Of course the most obvious thing would be to fund the covert spread of fanatical Maoism and other, similar, doctrines. The degree to which China has become a classically exploitative capitalist state cannot possible be lost on all of those Peasants and, as Mao himself pointed out, Peasants do, truly, make the best of guerillas.

Of course, this alone won't be enough. We've also got to consider the long-term future and expanding the battlefield. First: it means that, sooner or later, we're going to have to get serious about exploring for resources in places other than the Earth. Second, it means that we're going to have to begin to consider settling people on places other than the Earth.

But, most of all, we must be aware.

I'm from Vancouver, British Columbia. In case you don't know, that means that I'm more than a little familiar with what the future could look like. I've seen it, and it scares me.

The Chinese are industrious, hard-working, and determined. They can, if they wish to do so, pull this thing off.

A Great Man, Much Maligned

2005-03-23T22:00:00.000-07:00

The liberal press in Canada is taking great joy in the suffering of Lord Black of Crossharbour, a personal hero of mine. The actual owner of Hollinger Inc. (though, at the moment, he's been stripped of effective control of that company) appears to be under siege these days.

In the last two days I've read, in the Canadian Press, at least three negative stories. One was about shareholders attempting to prevent Lord Black from converting Hollinger Inc. (which he presently owns 82% of) from a publicly-traded company into a private company. Another was about a criminal fraud investigation of Black by the US Justice Department. The third was about Black mortgaging his home in Florida as part of a dispute with the Canada Revenue Agency.

Now, off the top, I'll admit that I'm not as familiar with the details of what Lord Black is accused of as some people. But I'm going to begin by telling you what I do know about the man.

I, as most of you know, am Canadian. I first began to truly read daily newspapers during the age of Black, when he controlled virtually every newspaper within reach. Not only did he own the Vancouver Province and Vancouver Sun but, in 1999, he launched The National Post, Canada's first national newspaper with a conservative bent. At one time, Black owned a majority of the news I read. Not only did he own the locals, but he also owned London's Spectator and Daily Telegraph, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Jerusalem Post, and a number of other newspapers all across the globe. Unlike his most similar rival, Rupert Murdoch, his holdings were concentrated in newspapers and those that he owned tended to promote his conservative views. More than that, unlike so many other newspapers, they tended to be interesting to read.

I think it can be declared, with reasonable precision, that the moment he left Canada was the moment that our press truly went off the cliff. As a Canadian I can say, of Lord Black, simply that he is missed.

It's interesting to see the degree to which Black's present troubles can be traced to the official harassment against him by Canada's elites, most notably our former Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien.

This began several years ago, when Black was originally appointed to the British House of Lords. The Prime Minister, no fan of Black's, invoked an obscure and eight decade-old law in an attempt to prevent him from accepting the honour. In response, Black renounced his Canadian citizenship in order to accept his title.

Events later forced Black to divest himself of his Canadian holdings. This was truly a sad day, for it marked the turn of the National Post towards what, for lack of a better word, may be termed as the "Canadian mainstream." It was then that Black gave some advice that I took, but later regretted. Upon leaving he declared he was selling his holdings to the Asper family, well known for their Liberal Party connections, because it was clear to him that Canada was a one-party state and that the best option for those of the right would be to work with the right-wing faction within the Liberal Party.

Though I eventually found this course of action too personally distasteful to pursue (the events of early 2003 on gay marriage and Iraq making the Liberals too personally distasteful for myself to associate with), I've yet to see nothing to disprove the fundamental rightness of his thesis. That, after the Liberals managed to steal more than a hundred million dollars in taxpayer money and the Tories managed to turn themselves into essentially a carbon-copy Liberal Party, the Liberals still maintain a lead in the polls seems to me to provide proof of the eternal destiny of that party beyond any reasonable doubt.

The pursuit of Lord Black by various regulatory and law enforcement agencies is, to me, a prime example of the fundamental wrong-headedness of much modern thinking on law and order. There's no real reason for the harassment of this man, beyond the fact that some people apparently do not much care for him on a personal level. He owns virtually all of Hollinger: it's his bloody company. Absent the efforts of Lord Black (and his equally maligned friend David Radler) there'd be not Hollinger for anyone to invest in or make any money in.

Right now, the company has been essentially stolen from Black by a renegade board of directors as Hollinger International. Whatever abuses Black may or may not have committed, strike me as immaterial in view of the fact that he owns a controlling interest in the company. It's his company; he ought to have a perfect to do with it pretty much as he wishes.

Of course, that's a little extreme. And so, I suppose, were a few of Black's actions here and there. Using $9 Million in company money to buy FDR memorabilia does, admittedly, seem a little over-the-top. But, then again, as I've said: no Black, no Hollinger, so who are the people who bought in to complain? If you buy into a company owned by someone like Conrad Black, you should expect them to behave like Conrad Black.

So, here's to Conrad Black. May he overcome all of his enemies. We're all a little poorer without his unique presence on the world media scene.

China's Future: Oil

2005-03-20T23:26:00.000-07:00

China delenda est. I feel as though I'm going to be thinking about (worrying about) China for a very long time, so I might as well get used to it. Frankly, I feel more than a little like Cato the Elder. I expect that I'm going to be talking about China for many, many years. Decades, probably and that maybe, just maybe, I'll end up getting as lucky as Cato in the end.

Where to begin? It's impossible not to begin with the issue of China's increasing economic power. While it's difficult to figure out exact statistics as to the size of the Chinese economy (estimates vary wildly) their import figures speak for themselves. China is sucking in raw materials. One can only presume that they're doing something with them.

Oil is, of course, just the beginning. But it's also the most critical part. China needs massive quantities of oil. Within a few decades, it'll need more oil than the United States. Odds are, based on what we've seen to date, that it'll need more oil than America sooner than everyone thinks. All of those cars that all of those newly middle-class Chinese are going to drive are going to need fuel.

The real reason why oil prices are soaring is exactly this: China's unending thirst for oil. China's demand for oil is increasingly exponentially.

So, what's to be done? Ultimately, we're going to have to have an oil war with the Chinese. It's going to be necessary to work out deals with every nation we can find to secure their oil and deny it to China. But, more than that, we need to consider several things.

First, it's necessary to maintain oil security. Oil is vital for warfare. Not only should the United States continue to work to explore increased domestic sources of oil, but it's also important to ensure that supplies are available for instant access. That means having active plans to seize foreign oil fields which have come under Chinese influence, such as those in Venezuela and Canada, if they continue to supply China during a military crisis.

That may sound extreme but, frankly, I don't really care. If the United States needs oil in a crisis, it'll get it. Period. It'd be best to plan for it.

On the same lines, it would probably be worthwhile to build up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as time allows. The more oil on hand, the less vulnerable the United States is (over the short-term) to a massive spike in world prices.

At the same time, we've also got to consider the need for alternative energy sources. I shudder at using the phrase. For me "alternative energy" draws to mind images of an unwashed environmentalist ranting about "Wind Power" and "Tidal Energy." "Wind Power" might be good for some small town, but it's not for a great nation like America.

What's required is a national effort to create future technology, particularly in the area of fusion power and the like. Advanced technology is within the reach of the United States, and it offers a real chance to move ahead.

Now, there's several ways to do this. Some would have direct subsidies. I propose a more market-based approach. The US Government ought to adapt the X-Prize approach to research, offering cash prizes in exchange for small verifiable steps in research.

At the same time, China's own reliance upon imported oil must be considered one of its greatest weaknesses. The one area where China's military power is absolutely and unquestionably incapable of competition with the United States is at sea.

The United States greatest advantage, therefore, is that is has a much greater capacity to cut off China's oil imports by sea. The United States Navy could destroy China's Navy and cut off any ability to ship oil into China by sea.

Energy is the fundamental building block of a modern economy. Without it, you can't do much. With it, you have the chance for success. It's absolutely essential that we prepare for conformation with China in this field.

Adam's Fanbase Speaks

2005-03-19T14:25:00.000-07:00

It looks as though Adam's many friends and supporters in the blogosphere were particularly impressed by the erudition, reasoned argument and balanced conclusions of his last post. Here are some of the more enthusiastic raves:

Ambidextrous (in the comments): "Adam Yoshida, like the rest of the heartless swine who point fingers at those who do not walk beside them, who cheer and sneer at the funerals of others who differ from them in mind or action, is just one more desperate nobody, living in fear and trembling at the prospect that those things he believes to be immutable laws of the universe -- those things that make him -- by virtue of his embrace and banner-waving -- make him more important and better than those OTHERS, that these things may be no more than the product of his particular point of view of the shadows on the wall of the cave in which he hides."

Blank Out Times: "Adam Yoshida is a spineless, dishonest cowardly mofo. Furthermore he doesn't represent anybody but himself and a few far-right nut-cases in Canada that subscribe to his blog."

The Light of Reason: "The fact that people like this even exist on this earth suddenly makes it very easy to grasp why incomprehensible and monstrous horrors continue to torment the world. “Happy Deathday.” Holy Mother of God. It’s not worth analyzing in any detail. And I suggest that you don’t read it at all if you’ve eaten recently, and if you have even one atom of decency in your being."

Two Years in Hell: Happy Deathday, Rachel Corrie

2005-03-16T00:13:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks like it's time once more to recall the story of the traitor Rachel Corrie, who has now been burning in hell for exactly two years. Frankly, I find her story very comforting: I take it as a sort of reassurance that, though the Lord cannot answer all of our prayers, at least he will occasionally take the time to remind us that, at the very least, he still has a sense of humor.

Now, I'm sure, some (even some who claim to be on the right) will send me e-mails insisting that there's nothing funny about some woman being crushed to death by a Bulldozer. But, then again, I'm a fan of the Darwin Awards and, verily, if someone ever deserved one, it's Rachel Corrie.

Some of you might not remember what the hell I'm talking about, so I'll take a moment to refresh your memory. Rachel Corrie was an "American" college student from Washington State who traveled to Greater Israel as a member of the "International Solidarity Movement" (which is ostensibly a protest group of some sort, but which reportedly functions as a sort of terrorist auxiliary movement) for the purpose of defending Palestinian terrorists from the justice which is surely due to them.

This is the ISM's game. So far as I can tell, their general policy is to run unarmed into combat zones and then cry when bad things happen to them as a result. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the ISM has a history of meeting with suicide bombers and shielding terrorists in their offices. As well, they've gotten into the habit of attempting to pull down sections of Israel's security fence. That Israel doesn't have a shoot-to-kill policy with regards to these morons is simply another lamentable example of that country's excessive moderation.

The exact story goes something like this: on March 16, 2003, Ms. Corrie was protesting the demolition of a terrorist's home (or perhaps it was a terrorist's family's home, I don't really remember). During the course of this, she made the unwise decision to lie down in front of a bulldozer, with predictable results. Thereafter she became a martyr of sorts.

The revelation of pictures taken the day before her timely demise showing Ms. Corrie burning a mock American flag led to her beatification within a matter of days. The process of full Canonization will, I'm sure, be completed within a matter of years. Young leftists across the country will, I'm certain, soon be walking around with "Saint Pancake" medals around their necks. If we're real lucky, they'll, in tribute to this great hero, decide to follow in her great tradition and find other Israeli bulldozers to be crushed to death by.

A quick look around Google News finds reports of a few dozen memorials held around the United States for that woman. Undoubtedly, there were actually many more than that. I'm sure that many leftists out there (including her parents, who are now apparently suing Caterpillar, the maker of that instrument of the Lord) will take a moment to actually mourn the traitor.

Is "traitor" too strong a word? I don't believe that it is. Ms. Corrie was indisputably disloyal to the United States. She spent the day before her last on Earth symbolically burning the American flag amid a crowd of Islamic fanatics. Her final act was to risk (and lose) her life in defense of terrorist-affiliated property. To say that these were not the actions of a patriot is a lot like saying that Liberace was slightly something other than straight.

What is standing alongside the enemies of the United States and burning a representation of the American flag if it is not treason? Joining with America's foes to burn the American flag strikes me as a textbook example of what the Founders meant when they put the words "aid and comfort" into the Constitution.

That this "lady" is now honored by so many on the left is simply a sign of their utter depravity and immorality. If the left had even a single patriotic bone left in its body, they'd be as fierce in denouncing this sack of trash as the rest of us are.

Crime: The Conservative Path to Victory

2005-03-15T23:04:00.000-07:00

If the Conservative Party of Canada really wants to form the next government (and, based upon their stumbles during the Liberal minority, that's a big if) there's one major untapped issue for them to tackle which, in my view, offers a near-certain hope of victory. That issue, simply, is crime.

If there's one idea which unifies almost all Canadians, I think, it's the idea that our justice system is fundamentally broken and requires mending. It's the idea that criminals in this country are allowed to get away nearly scot-free and that honest and hard-working people are thereby forced to live in a country that it less safe than it ought to be.

Go to any Tim Hortons in the land and talk to the people. There is no single issue which causes more animated agreement than that of crime. Listen to any radio talk show in the land. There's no subject which prompts a louder chorus of disgust and anger than crime.

Forget health care: forget whatever the polls say. If the Tories jump on the crime issue and stick with it, they'll be the next government, possibly even with a majority. This is an issue which has the potential to devastate the Liberals, if only for a single election.

To begin: we need not even stake out an extreme position on the issue. For example, even though a majority of Canadians support the death penalty, I wouldn't advise calling for it in the platform. I say that because, if it was in the platform, it would become the center of the argument and Canadians would quickly find themselves drowning in a river of Dead Man Walking-like mawkish sentimentality.

Instead, the Conservatives ought to embrace a common-sense platform on crime that virtually all Canadians could support. This platform should be the centerpiece of the Conservative campaign and could be used to counter Liberal cries about the Charter of Rights.

"Freedom from fear," Harper should assert, "is the first right, and it is only with safety that we may enjoy our other rights."

So, what should the Tories promise? A simple and moderate platform that looks something like the following should suffice:

1) Abolish mandatory release. Prisoners may be paroled only with good behavior.
2) Establish mandatory minimum sentences for all crimes of violence and various other crimes.
3) Mandate jail time (any amount of jail time, really) for a second offense other than a summary conviction offense.
4) Abolish the Gun Registry and use the money saved to hire 10,000 additional cops and put them on the streets.
5) Make a "life sentence" mean exactly what it sounds like it means.

The wonderful thing about this is that it casts the Liberals (and the NDP, and the Bloc) in the role of defending an unpopular group of people. Because many Liberals are actually liberal in fact, we can be certain that any number of Liberal MP's and would-be MP's will be more than happy going on the record in defense of rapists and murderers.

BC-STV: What the Hell?

2005-03-13T21:55:00.000-07:00

Ask a proponent of the British Columbia Single Transferable Vote system how it works and they'll simply tell you, "it makes the system fairer." This is the fundamental pitch of the supporters of BC-STV: "it's fair."

But how fair is it?

The question that British Columbians will be asked on May 17th is deceptively simple, "Should British Columbia change to the BC-STV electoral system as recommended by the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform?" But the system that those voting "yes" will be choosing is not.

Supporters tend to have an easy time explaining to people how you will vote under the BC-STV system. When you get your ballot, you'll be asked to rank all (or as many as you choose) of the candidates on the ballot in order of your preference. So far as the proponents are concerned, that's all you need to know. But, in my view, a citizen should not only know how they vote, but how their vote will be counted thereafter. That's where this system falls down.

To begin: you wouldn't be electing a single MLA, a district could contain anywhere from two to seven seats. Consider the simple implications of that for a just a moment. In BC at this very moment we have two major political parties, the BC Liberals and the NDP and two smaller parties of note: the Green Party and Democratic Reform BC. All of those parties can be expected to run candidates in a majority of ridings. Add smaller parties and independents to the ballot and it's easily possible that you might have forty different people on a single ballot. Simply counting the candidates of the two major parties, a voter would have to familiarize themselves with the backgrounds and position of fourteen different individuals.

Several people I've talked to are of the impression that their votes for multiple candidates would be counted as votes are now for City Councils (meaning that all of the votes would be added up and the top vote getters would be declared elected). That's simply flat-out wrong. Their votes would be counted by a process so extreme that it makes advanced theoretical physics look simple in compassion.

So: how are your votes actually counted? Well, I'm going to try and explain it to you in under a thousand words.

Let's assume a theoretical riding with four MLA's being elected (this, then, is a middle scenario, not the most complex one). There are four Liberal candidates, four NDP candidates, two Green candidates and one Democratic Reform BC candidate. I'm omitting any independent candidates for the sake of simplicity.

Let's say that 130,000 people vote in this massive four-MLA riding. This allows us to make the first of our many calculations: we need to figure out what the "quota" is, the quota being the number of votes needed for a person to be declared elected. We figure out this number by dividing the total number of votes by the number of MLA's to be elected plus one. In a riding where 130,000 people voted, the number would be 26,001.

Now we need to add up the first preference voters. Let's say we have four Liberals (Liberal 1-4) who got 40,000 votes, 13,000 votes, 10,001 votes, and 9999 votes each (the first Liberals is a popular Cabinet Minister, the others are backbenchers). We have four New Democrats who got 20,000 votes, 12,000 votes, 10,000 votes, and 8000 votes. There are two Greens, who got 5000 votes and 1001 votes. And, finally, there's a Democratic Reform BC candidates who got 999 votes.

To begin: Liberal candidate #1 is over the quota. That means that we now have to calculate their vote surplus. We do this by dividing the number of votes they got above the quota by the total number of votes they received. We then examine the second preference on each ballot and allocate those ballots to the other candidates at the percentage we received as the answer to the previous equation. In this case, it turns out that we're going to be allocating the equivalent of 13,999 votes.

Now, after we allocate those votes, we find that no candidate is above the quota, so we now have to drop the lowest candidate off the ballot and reallocate their ballots at full value. As it turns out, that ends up being the second Green candidate.

We repeat this process many times (in the spreadsheet I came up with, we have to count the ballots an additional six times) before we get another candidate elected. As it turns out, the second candidate elected is the top New Democrat.

Here's where another peculiarity of the system can come into play. The lowest ranking Liberal drops off the list, but their votes aren't enough to put anyone over the top. Thus, we're left with a list where the two lowest ranking candidates are both New Democrats and the top two candidates are Liberals.

We have a Liberal with 25,200 votes, a Liberal with 18,001 votes, a New Democrat with 18,648 votes, and a New Democrat with 16,149 votes. Because of this, the bottom New Democrat drops off the ballot. Almost all of their votes go to the other New Democrat, resulting in an NDP'er being the third candidate elected. Then, eventually, the votes will also shake up to put the Liberal with 25,200 votes over the top.

In other words, this "fairer" system isn't even fair. 56% of people voted for a Liberal on their first preference versus 38% who voted for a New Democrat, yet we ended up with two Liberal and two New Democrats elected.

Don't understand how I calculate the above totals? Don't worry, no one else will either.

That's what really worries me about the BC-STV referendum: people won't understand it. There's nothing worse for most people than something which obviously exceeds their capacities of comprehension. Rather than admit that they don't really understand what he hell is going on, I'll bet that a lot of people will find it easier to simply adopt the line that the system is "fairer" and hope that no one enquires farther.

This is an awful system. You shouldn't need a massive spreadsheet to figure out how your vote was calculated. When the newspapers publish election results, they ought to be shorter than a Tom Clancy novel.

The completely fabulous Adam Yoshida

2005-03-08T14:10:00.000-07:00

At the start of his most recent post (immediately below), Adam referred to the reaction to his one about Venezuela. Here's a smattering of what he was talking about:

Jesus' General: (from the comments) "From what I read earlier about this Yoshida, I have no doubt that he is shacked up with one of those Cyborgasmatrix 'love dolls.' Too bad his idea of making "comfort women" out of liberal broads never gained broad popularity..."

NewsHog: "All boldfaced type is mine, by the way. Mr. Yoshida obviously doesn't feel his insanity is so out beyond the realms of normal as to require boldface. If you have to have the many reasons his rant comprises insanity explained to you, you should probably join him in a padded room. However, feel free to comment on the computer the nice nurses let you have once a week and I will explain them all to you...slowly."

Doucheblog (again): "I've just re-discovered the completely fabulous Adam Yoshida, an "ultra-conservative political commentator" who is what you'd get if you started with Michelle Malkin, gave her a sex change and made her Canadian, and then locked the resulting specimen in his room for the first 21 years of life--without contact with the outside world except for stacks of The Weekly Standard, Ann Coulter books, and Mein Kampf."

War for Resources?

2005-03-07T20:08:00.000-07:00

Well, I managed to piss more than a few people off with my comments about Venezuela. On at least one site, my comments became transmogrified into, "Conservative Publication Calls for Assassination of Hugo Chavez." If only, my friends, if only.

Frankly, despite the anger it inspired, I'm not really sure if what I wrote got across the point I was trying to make, so I'm going to give it another shot.

I think I let my hatred of Hugo Chavez get in the way. When, in the Summer of 2001, I had a chance to personally speak with a representative of the Organization of American States, I used my time to berate him about how, if Communist Cuba was not welcome in the OAS, then neither should be Chavez' Venezuela. So I can date my hatred of the man back at least to that point. Of course, more accurately, I can date it to whenever the first moment I learned of the existence of Mr. Chavez and of his politics.

But, in truth, the real point of the column wasn't about Venezuela at all. I need not again recite my litany of complaints about that nation: it's support for Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, its involvement in subversive activities all across South America, its alliance with China, etc (well, I guess I did just list them). The real point was to assert a fundamental doctrine: if the United States requires resources for the functioning of its economy and others seek to deliberately deny them access to those resources then the United States has the right to take them, by force if necessary.

I consider myself to be an advocate of asymmetrical warfare on the part of the United States. It makes little sense to me that we should confine trade sanction for trade sanction and trade blow only for blow. America has its power for a reason and will not long be able to retain its power if it fails to use it effectively.

Were Venezuela to sign some sort of exclusive trade arrangement with China and thereby harm the US domestic economy, American military action would be an absolute necessity. This is not for simply economic or punitive reasons, but for demonstrative ones as well.

More than a few of my "correspondents" (those, I hasten to add, who bothered to offer something beyond a burst of misspelled profanity) claimed that, if the United States took such action, the world would unite against it. While I believe that to be patent nonsense, it has a kernel of truth to it: if the majority of the world did unite against the United States, American options would be very quickly reduced to a choice between some kind of surrender and the creation of a "Fortress America."

That's what makes action against Venezuela so appealing. In order to prevent China from engaging in a sort of economic encirclement of America, we need to pick up the first crappy little country which tries to pull such a stunt and throw them up against the wall.

Frankly, I think that the roots of our present problems with the Islamists can be traced, at least in part, to the failure of the United States to respond firmly to the Arab Oil Embargo. Where no realistic option for economic retaliation exists, other possibilities need to be explored. If the United States had responded to the Arab Oil Embargo by picking one of the major Arab countries at random and smashing it to little pieces, I doubt if America would have suffered the economic dislocations that it did.

Economic acts of war invite military retaliation. This is a clear line that needs to be drawn. The United States should not recognize a distinction between acts of war involving arms and those which use economic, political, or diplomatic means. The United States greatest strength is its military strength and it should be exploited to the greatest possible degree to ensure the preservation of American power.

Now, there are two important questions to dispose of at this juncture:

First: what gives America the right to use force in response to an economic act of war, and do others have this right? Frankly, I would argue that the right to respond to an economic act of war with military force is one well-rooted in history. The War of 1812, a military conflict, came largely in response to British interference with American trade interests. Any number of British police actions in the 19th Century came about in response to various acts of economic aggression against British interests. The Opium Wars, to pick one example, came about directly in response to economic actions by the Chinese.

All nations clearly retain the right to wage war in response to acts of economic aggression, such as trade sanctions or blockades. This leads us into the second question, which came up a number of times.

If it is proper for a nation to wage war based upon economic motives, was Japan right to launch a war against the United States in 1941? The thing is, that's the wrong question. It's really two questions.

First: was the American oil embargo against Japan an "act of economic aggression" on a sufficient scale to justify a military response? I think it's rather obvious that the answer to that question is yes. The purpose of the oil embargo was the cripple Japan's economic output. By placing such sanctions upon Japan, the United States certainly accepted the risk of war. This was the right thing for the United States to do, but let us not delude themselves, it was certainly an act of aggression against Japan. It was, of course, an act of justifiable aggression, but I see no reason that should have particularly mattered to the leaders of Japan.

The second question is this: was it right for Japan to launch a war against the United States in response to the oil embargo? I think it should be fairly obvious that the answer is no. It was clear to many that Japan could not possibly win a war against the United States: it should have been clear to all. Wars, in my view, must be justified in terms of their cost. Nothing that might be gained out of a war against the United States could possibly justify the potential calamity of war. Similarly, it would be utterly foolish of the United States to launch a war against China for purely economic reasons for exactly the same reason: any gain that might be realized in a war with China would be entirely offset by the horrific toll of such a conflict.

"So," you may ask, "are you saying that it's ok to go to war against other nations for their resources, so long as they're not strong enough to put up a fight?" The answer to that question, in short, is yes, it is.

I'm an old-fashioned imperialist: I'm not crazy. I'm not interested in seeing the United States involved in any war which risks America's strength.

This brings us to another question raised by my critics: how do I reconcile these ideas with my ideas on human freedom? My answer is this: very easily.

I believe in managed freedom. People have freedom, yes, but they cannot cross certain lines. Man has freedom, yes, but not the freedom to murder. Nations have freedom, yes, but not the freedom to oppose the United States of America.

A world which will continue to be free must have an arbiter. There must be one single nation capable of commanding sufficient force to bring rogue states to heel, to avoid major conflict between the other powers, and to provide for a stable international economic system. That one state is the United States of America. You may think that to be unfair, but if you do I do not much care what you think. That's the way things are.

Is the United States the world's police force? Yes, in a very real way it is. It's forced to assume the job due to the lack of a suitable alternative candidate.

And, just as the police have rights that ordinary citizens do not, so does the United States therefore have rights that ordinary countries do not. You cannot speed down a city street at ninety miles an hour: but the police can. You cannot break down your neighbor's door, but the police can. The powers of the police are not unlimited, but they do have their privileges.

The United States plays the same function for the world that a Town Sheriff may have in the Old West. The United States doesn't command sufficient power to confront every threat at once, or to wipe some out altogether. Instead, it has the power to keep order and to keep the most dangerous forces at bay, perhaps gradually eroding the power of those forces.

So: war for resources? Yes, under certain conditions. You may not like it (I'm not even sure if I like it, given some potential implications of the doctrine) but it must be an option.

War for Oil? Possibly

2005-03-04T22:40:00.000-07:00

It's not widely known, but the fourth-largest supplier of crude oil and petroleum products to the United States is Venezuela, which, in 2003, provided a total equal to about ¾'s of that provided by Saudi Arabia. A cut-off of oil supplies from that nation would send already-high oil prices into the stratosphere. Worse still: it's entirely possible that, thanks to an increasingly-close relationship with China, Venezuela's leftist President, Hugo Chavez, could cut off exports without harming his own domestic economy. In terms of ability and willingness to cause widespread harm to the United States, Chavez may be the single most dangerous enemy that America has today.

So: what is to be done? The coup, of course, has been the traditional American means for getting rid of Latin American leaders who forget their place in the natural order of things. This was already tried against Chavez in the spring of 2002 and horribly botched.

There were three major reasons for the failure of the coup, in my view;

First: though the plotters successfully captured Chavez they, for some insane reason, failed to immediately execute him. This, of course, allowed him to resume power once the plot had collapsed.

Second, the plotters failed to dispose of other major regime figures, most notably the Vice President.

Finally, action taken to suppress protests after the coup were weak and half-hearted. It may be politically incorrect to say so, but a coup isn't a tea party: people have to die. I discuss this simply as a means of pointing out that I'm not entirely sure if there are people in Venezuela willing to launch a coup who have the courage to carry it through to the finish.

To begin: the consequences of any sort of Venezuela-China deal must be made extremely clear. Any attempt to interfere with the American economy by China and Venezuela would, in essence, be an economic declaration of war and would require an appropriate response.

Worse still, Venezuela has become increasingly aggressive within the region. In particular, it's begun to play a major role in the ongoing FARC terrorist war in Colombia, funding the group and providing it with sanctuary.

Venezuela has acquired advanced military technology in recent years, most notably through a deal with Russia to purchase MiG-29 fighters. An assault on that country would be difficult.

Similarly, going to war with China over Venezuelan oil would be, in my view, at least slightly excessive.

However, I do have one idea. It's a simple one: a naval blockade combined with air strikes. If the United States can't have Venezuelan oil, than no one can. A relatively small force of the US Navy would be fully capable of cutting off any oil shipping on the part of Venezuela. US Aircraft, even tactical aircraft based in the Continental United States, would be able to destroy that nation's air force and then, thereafter, hit at will targets of opportunity. At the same time, the US could work with other nations in the region to deploy forces in order to effect a regime change. Perhaps we might even manage to develop a made-in-Venezuela solution to the problems.

At the same time we must, of course, look for other options, short of war. In particular, we ought to consider the possibility of covert action.

Mr. Chavez appears to be the indispensable man in the regime. His assassination ought to become a paramount objective of covert US policy.

At the same time, other possibilities should be looked at. With his covert support of FARC, Chavez is practically waging war against Colombia. Perhaps they would return the favor.

Ultimately, we must be prepared for action and disdain passive measures. Hugo Chavez' Venezuela is a dangerous and rogue nation. Worse still, it's a nation with the capacity to harm the United States.

Iraq wasn't a war for oil. But that doesn't mean that such a war wouldn't be appropriate under certain conditions. The United States needs oil. The United States is the leading superpower in the world. Any nation which attempts to interfere with the American economy is committing an act of economic warfare against this country. It should be the policy of the United States to respond to acts of overt economic warfare with acts of physical warfare. Any nation which attempts to withhold its resources from the United States for the purpose of sabotaging the American economy should be attacked and forced to acknowledge its inferior position.

The Red Guard Emerges

2005-03-03T15:51:00.000-07:00

If we can't beat this Liberal Party now, Canada's conservatives ought to give up and, recognizing Canada's bi-national origins, look first to the baser side of our national character and next for a white flag. Going into their convention this weekend the Liberal Party is faced with a party base which is seemingly moving to the left of the NDP and a party leadership so directionless and confused that, if the recent actions of their official leader serve as any guide, they're probably incapable of figuring out which bathroom to use without extended consultation with their spouse and/or life partner.

What we're faced with now is a dangerous combination. We have a weak and directionless Prime Ministers whose only apparent goal is to retain the power that he is manifestly incapable of exercising. We have an opposition incapable of opposing anything that this Prime Minister does because they apparently fear the voters more than any other thing. And, finally, we have an increasingly leftist Liberal Party base which appears to be under the control of, well, no one.

Forget gay marriage, for a moment. We know that it's going to happen. Martin is willing to whip the votes of his caucus, if necessary. Harper's not willing to use the Notwithstanding Clause. The deal there is, sadly, done.

Now the question is simple: what comes next? There's a strange sort of spirit about in the land. The Canadian left is emboldened by their victories on gay marriage, the Iraq War, and missile defense. Their exuberance leaves them eager for the next step, whatever it is, and every victory fuels their ardor. In my nightmares I see them as latter-day Red Guards, rampaging across the land in a bloody quest to purge all that fails to measure up to their standards of revolutionary purity. I see their apocalyptic sweep across out land destroying the last vestiges of decency and common sense. Trust me, friends: it will all end in tears.

To begin, the Liberal Party is playing a dangerous game with the United States. I don't know if they're doing it be design (because hatred of Americans does seem to go down as well in Canada these days as hatred of Jews went down at Oberammergau in 1930) or by accident, but the increasing provocation of the United States by our government only promises trouble. To begin: I think that we're well into the process of instigating a trade war.

The rejection of missile defense isn't premised on rationality: it's based entirely upon a visceral hatred of the United States. America offered Canada full participation in a defensive shield, including the ability to bid for contracts, in exchange for nothing other than moral support. The Canadian response, so far as I can tell was, "fuck you, but defend us anyways."

Of course, if we do manage to blunder into a trade war with the United States, we get into some very dangerous ground. The traditional refrain of the radical left, when it comes to trade with the United States, is that we ought to attempt to gain leverage by cutting off exports of power and water, on the theory that such actions would bring the United States to its knees.

The problem with that scenario is that it fails to project far enough into the future. Imagine, for a moment, that some hostile Canadian Government actually miscalculated badly enough to try such a stunt. What do you think that the government of the United States would do next? The Americans are not a passive or a gentle people when it comes to assaults against their country or their economy. Americans do not take kindly insults to their flag. Do you think that, under such conditions, the United States would really roll over and give Canada what it wants? Hardly!

If I were the President of the United States and some Canadian Prime Minister was foolish enough to try and cut off power and water shipment to the United States, my response would be swift and deadly: I would invade Canadian soil and physically seize power generation and water shipment facilities. I would order that deadly force b used if Canadian police, armed forces, or citizens attempted to interfere in such operations and I wouldn't leave until the Canadian Government agreed to pay a large amount of cash as reparations and promised to never allow such an interruption again. If the Canadian government attempted to seriously resist, I'd depose it.

The United States is slow to anger but, once you have its attention, you'd best have either a thousand nuclear bombs or a space ship to take your to Mars if you wish to live. Those in Canada who take delight at hating Americans would do well to remember this.

Even allowing for the hope that the Red Guards will fail in their apparent ambition to bring on a made-in-Canada version of the apocalypse (think of it as being to the real apocalypse what a CBC movie is to a real movie), we can be reasonably assured that they will not be appeased in their ambition to turn Canada into a Continent-spanning version of San Francisco.

Among the crazier notions on the agenda for the Liberal Convention are legalized prostitution, legalized drugs, and seats in Parliament set aside specifically for Indians.

One should remember: these are the policies that actually made it to the convention. Only the Lord knows what sort of insanity was voted down along the way. These resolutions are, in essence, contestants in the party policy playoffs.

The thing that truly appalled me about the prostitution legalization resolution being put before the Liberal Convention wasn't the idea, but rather the way in which it's been presented. I know a little bit about what's motivated the people in the Liberal Youth to propose the legalization of prostitution. More than anything else, they're motivated by the (in my opinion flawed) belief that legalization will prevent a repeat of the actions of serial killer Robert Pickton, who managed to murder dozens of prostitutes over a period of many without anyone, well, noticing. So I get that.

What really bothers me is the wording of the resolution. The author complains that, "criminalizing acts related to the sex trade also perpetuates a negative social stigma surrounding sex trade workers" and declares that, "the sex trade is a profession central to the subsistence of many Canadian citizens who deserve the same workplace safety and social respect as any other member of our society." This, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is Looney-left stuff.

It is one thing to believe that legalizing prostitution will keep prostitutes or the radar of society and thereby keep them from harm. It's another thing altogether to drive through the Downtown Eastside shouting, "You go girl!"

We all agree that the sex trade exists and that it isn't going away. But I think that most of us would also agree that minimizing the number of women sucked into this evil world should be of the highest priority. I realize that talk about the "White Slave Trade" may be a little passé these days, but I do not believe that I could be fairly criticized if I assert that no rational person dreams (or should be encouraged to dream) of whoredom as a lucerative avocation.

The most humorous bit about the whole thing, of course, is that legalization won't even help the women who those bold Young Liberals seek to assist. I do not wish to be crude, but the economics of a legalized prostitution business are not geared towards the utilization of the services of women of the sort who Robert Pickton killed. Unless we simply legalize solicitation on the streets (in which case, so far as I can tell, we'll have achieved nothing at all), the majority of the women working in the segments of the sex industry with which we are concerned at the moment are going to have a very difficult time finding employment.

The only way that legalization, as they envision it, would work would be if it was combined with a major effort to sweep clean the streets of many of Canada's cities. Of course, that could also be done without legalization as well so, therefore, my presumption is that the authors of this resolution would not be supportive of such a move.

On drugs, the proponents of the legalization of marijuana use the same arguments that all advocates use. "Pot," they claim, "doesn't kill anyone." And so it doesn't, so far as medical authorities are concerned. What they don't mention, of course, is that anyone who did die as a result of the long-term use of the drug would, in all probability, have their death classified as "smoking-related" – tobacco smoking related. Cute, to say the least.

In any case, I don't much care at this point if pot is legalized, on one condition: I shouldn't have to pay for social services for any users of the drug. I wouldn't hold your breathe on that one, though: not only does the convention was to legalize pot, but they also want to guarantee a minimum income to everyone in Canada a move which, I am certain, will be celebrated in every crack den in the land.

Of course, if most of the Liberals had their way, we wouldn't have any "crack dens" anymore, since they'd all be owned by the government.

The Liberals seem to be believers in socialism of the vice. The addicts, they think, should own the means of their addiction.

If everything goes according to the present plan then in about ten years or so a British Columbian should be able to buy cigarettes and alcohol only from a government-owned liquor store, before going to a municipally-run gambling establishment to win money to buy crack cocaine from the Canadian Narcotics Distribution Authority on the way to a enjoy the deluxe oral service package from the local outlet of Erotic Services Canada/Services Érotiques Canada.

As time goes on, it seems, government in Canada is becoming indistinguishable from government by the Mafia. Like the mob, it seems, the government will soon run the drug trade, the prostitution trade, the booze business, and gambling. It's no wonder that the big crime families reportedly have friends within our government.

So far as I can tell, the only distinction which will soon exist between being ruled by the Federal Government and being ruled by the Mafia is that the Mob would probably provide better services for lower prices and that the streets would be better policed.

Finally, I can't shut up without saying at least a word or two on the absurd plan to set aside fourteen seats in the House of Commons for Indians. This has already been enacted in New Zealand, so it's quite possible that they might try it here. In fact, if the Liberals are real smart, maybe they can remake the whole of the House of Commons in keeping with our self-image as a "community of communities." To add to the Indians seats (which, inevitably, will be all won by the Liberals or the NDP) they can add a pair of safe Liberal seats allocated to the Tamil Tigers, another two for Moslem terrorists, and so forth, running down the list of every other Liberal interest group. Finally, they can split up white men and women too, while they're at it, allocating them separate seats. All in the interests of our diverse mosaic.

If you'll excuse me now, I've got to go throw up.

Missile Follies

2005-03-02T22:50:00.000-07:00

What I find most humorous about the Liberal opposition to Ballistic Missile Defense is this: the same people pushing for the implementation of these policies are the same people who will be most deeply horrified about their ultimate consequences. Their decision to abandon our responsibilities for the defense of our homeland will lead, inexorably, to the loss of the sovereignty that they so value.

Those who harbor continuing delusions that Canada is relevant need only consider our present defense position.

The Prime Minister's demand that he be consulted before the United States fires defensive weapons is absurd enough to make for a good Saturday Night Live Sketch.

FADE IN: A military command post, with fancy computers and massive lighted map displays.

TEXT: North American Aerospace Defense Command, Cheyenne Mountain, CO

A number of uniformed officers move about rapidly. A warning light suddenly goes off.

AIR FORCE MAJOR: General! General! We have a missile launch! Yongbyong Missile Field, DPRK!

Alarms ring. A track appears on the map showing the missile moving rapidly from North Korea towards North America. The General walks over to stand behind the Air Force Major.

CINC-NORAD: Do we have a course plot?

Another man at a nearby computer turns backwards to face the General.

AIR FORCE CAPTAIN: Initial impact estimate is CONUS, probably the Pacific Northwest.

CINC-NORAD: I initiate an attack warning. Get me the President.

CUT TO: The White House, Washington, DC

The red phone on the President's desk rings. He picks it up.

PRESIDENT: Hello?

CINC-NORAD: Mr. President, we have a missile incoming. We request permission to release the ABM's at Fort Greely for launch.

PRESIDENT: Hold on, General. We've got to follow our procedures. I've got to call Paul before we do anything else. Hold the line.

The President hits a button on the phone, and dials another number. Something picks up on the line.

EMERGENCY LINE: Bonjour, vous avez atteint la ligne de secours du premier ministre du Canada. Pour le service en français, pression une. Pour le service en anglais, pression deux.

The President looks up, mystified. Finally, he presses "0" in hopes of getting an Operator.

EMERGENCY LINE: Le service d'opérateur est seulement lundi disponible au vendredi de neuf AM à cinq P.M. et samedi d'onze AM à quatre P.M.. Si vous laissez un message nous serons sûrs d'obtenir de nouveau à vous aussitôt que possible. Si vous avez besoin de l'aide immédiate, écrivez la prolongation de la personne que vous souhaitez atteindre.

The President, angry, mashes a number of buttons.

EMERGENCY LINE: Bonjour, vous avez atteint le bureau de Monsieur Jaques LeClair, commissaire national pour Transgendered redresse. Je ne suis pas à mon bureau en ce moment, si vous laissez un message que je peux écouter lui.

The President tries again. This time he finally reaches the Prime Minister.

PRESIDENT: Mr. Prime Minister, we have a North Korean ballistic missile inbound, to hit somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. I'm calling you to consult.

MARTIN: We have to stand on guard against any hasty overreaction, Mr. President. It's important that our response to this event reflect Canadian values.

PRESIDENT: Well, I was thinking that we'd, you know, shoot it down.

MARTIN: That's the problem so many Canadians have with Americans. You shoot first and ask questions later. This missile hasn't harmed any Americans. I don't think the Canadian people are going to back unilateral and preemptive action against the military of a country that has yet to murder a single American today.

PRESIDENT: Yah-huh. I still think we'd better shoot it down.

MARTIN: I plead with you, Mr. President, don't resort to force without thinking. It's very important that we exhaust all diplomatic options before using military force. I think we need to seriously consider asking the opinion of the United Nations before we doing anything excessive.

PRESIDENT: Paul, yeah, we're going to shoot it down.

MARTIN: Please, Mr. President, don't do this! We should at least talk to the North Koreans before we take any precipitous action!

PRESIDENT (INCREDULOUS): You want us to talk to the North Koreans? Now?

MARTIN: There's still a possibility that we might be able to avoid the trauma of war! Have you considered the fact that, by shooting down their missile, you will grievously harm the self-esteem of the Korean people. You will render them mentally impotent!

The President hangs up the phone.

Does This Man Look Like a Leader To You?

2005-03-02T16:58:00.000-07:00

Now, really, doesn't the man have advisors to tell him, "Paul, you really shouldn't sit like that?"

What kind of Prime Minister sits on the ground with his knees folded like that? It just strikes me as surpemely undignified. I can think of worse comments (and some have been made elsewhere) but, for some reason, I just wanted to share the picture because I think it says something about the smallness of the man.

The New Domino Theory

2005-03-01T23:50:00.000-07:00

Freedom, it would appear, is contagious. Whether or not democracy triumphs in the Islamic world today or tomorrow or in ten years, it seems certain to me that President Bush's declaration of the Freedom Doctrine on January 20th, 2005, combined with the Iraqi Elections of ten days later will forever be remembered as the time when the tide turned in favor of freedom and tyrants were, at long last, truly held to account.

Of course, it isn't these things along. It's an atmosphere of liberty which is toppling one wobbly tyranny after the other.

Freedom is on the march and tyrants fear the sound. We live in a world where the people rule. The brave people of the Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, Georgia, and Lebanon are showing us the way. And they're doing it for one reason: they know that the most powerful nation in the world is a friend of freedom.

Would the people in Ukraine have resisted without assistance from the West? Probably. Would they have been successful? I'm not certain. Were not the words of the Europeans backed by the knowledge on the part of both the Russians and the Ukrainian Government that George W. Bush was in the White House, I suspect that the Orange Revolution would have had an unhappy ending.
And what of the others? Would Afghanistan have voted without the United States? It's practically unthinkable. Would Iraq? It's impossible. Would Lebanon's people have risen without the example of their Iraqi brothers and sisters? I doubt it.

I'm a Republican, so it's natural that I'm thankful that George Walker Bush is in the White House. I was thrilled by both of his election victories. But, these days, there are times where I literally get down on my knees and thank almighty God that George Bush is the President.

I didn't always believe in him. Frankly, I've always leaned more towards realism and realpolitik. In many ways, I was sympathetic to the arguments of those who believed that the best way to confront Iraq would have been to smash the Saddam regime, install someone, and march out. But George W. Bush and the brave Americans who serve under him have shown the entire world what we have always known to be true: freedom is the most basic desire of all people

When I think of the sacrifices of the brave fighting men and women of both America and its allies, the fighting required to create the new Iraq, I sometimes think back to the words of Thomas Paine, "What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value."

These days the President looks strangely imbued. He is a man confident of the rightness of his cause and certain that the Lord is on his side. And so I believe he is. Sometimes, when I look at the President, I think of what the Bible says, "a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house."

We're winning the Global War on Terrorism. The terrorists may strike, but they cannot shake our resolve. They cannot beat us. They can only further demonstrate their depravity.

What do you think that people of Iraqi think about the "resistance" so glorified by Michael Moore and his ilk in the world media? Do you really think that those who indiscriminately slaughter the innocent will find support amongst the people? Do you really think that the people wish to be ruled by those who practice murder as a professional sport?

The Iraqi people and the people of the Islamic world are not fools. They may disagree with us on some things, but no one desires to be ruled by barbarians. While Western moral equivalency fetishists may be blind, the people of the Islamic world can see. Only the insane would, if given the choice, choose to be ruled by bearded lunatics who justify their depravity by spouting off versus of the Koran.

In this world, the people are sovereign. No government, even the most depraved and immoral, can long maintain its power without the acquiescence of the people. No government that has ever existed, even Stalin's Russia or Hitler's Germany, could have survived a mass popular uprising. After all, the soldiers who man the weapons are, themselves, a segment of the people. If a government survives, it is because the people are willing to accept its survival or are unaware of their own inner strength.

I realize that I'm starting to sound like a Marxist-Leninist here, preaching the power of the people and so on. And, in a way, I am: but in a very different way.
What I preaching is the evangel of popular will and individual rights. I envision a world revolution, yes, but not a revolution aimed at establishing a new tyranny. Not a revolution aimed at theft.

Rather, I envision a world of peaceful democratic states, led by that supreme champion of freedom, the United States of America, in peaceful cooperation and commerce. In envision a world united by a strong believe in the necessity of personal and economic freedoms. I envision a world where it is understood that the government, though necessary, must be restrained and that we live in a world of people who have governments, not governments who have people.

This is the new Domino Theory. When liberty arrives in one land, it will spread to others. It is inevitable, unavoidable, and right.
Tyranny cannot survive the age of mass communication so long as we are prepared to resist it. Now that the people know their own strength, they cannot be expected to abjure it.

As freedom spread to the lands of Communism, so too will freedom now spread to the lands of Islam. The spread of liberty is unstoppable for the simple reason that, in the end, it is the solution to the material wants of the world. Inevitably, free people are also rich people.

Freedom will march onwards. The question now, becomes, how we will safeguard our liberties and our plans for a perfect world from other enemies, those where the people, in their degraded condition, agree to accept the loss of freedom.

Being There

2005-02-27T16:43:00.000-07:00

File this under, "Republicans Right Again." My good friend Governor Dr. Howard Brush Dean III has been the Democratic Chairman for about two weeks and he's already managed to make an ass out of himself. This time he did it in Kansas, a state that's voted for a Democrat for President exactly once since the Second World War, where he, displaying the tact that he's famous for, managed to brand all Republicans evil. True, I'm not as skilled a politician as some, but I'm fairly sure that calling people "evil" isn't the way to convince them to join your side.

Now I'm sure that some Democrats will try to spin this. I don't blame them for that. But let's just put it this way: if the Republicans elected a new Chairman whose main idea was to reach out to blue states and that Chairman's first action was to travel to San Francisco for outreach and, once there, that same Chairman managed to brand all Democrats as "sodomites" or something like that, I'm pretty sure that everyone would agree that someone had goofed.

Why does Howard Dean have such a high reputation among certain circles in the Democratic Party? What has he ever done to earn it? So far as I can tell, Dr. Dean is a lucky (and liberal) version of Alan Keyes. He's a man who, through some mysterious entropy has managed to rise to the level of his own incompetence not once, but many times. The fact that such a man is now the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee symbolizes the moral bankruptcy of that party. Like the Illinois GOP (another dying institution) the Democratic Party chose Dean to be its leader less out of desire and more out of desperation.

Dean's main positive attribute in his career has been his ability to show up at exactly the right time. He became Governor of Vermont because he was the Lieutenant Governor of the state when his predecessor died. He became the front-runner for the Democratic nomination two years ago because he happened to blunder into a political team which managed to tap the internet and anti-Bush hatred. He became Chairman of the Democratic National Committee because his followers were rabid enough to frighten every other potential candidate from the race.

It's worth noting that his previous record should leave Republican smiling.

During his time as Governor of Vermont his percentage of the vote dropped from about 80% to just over 50%. When he left office, the voters of Vermont rewarded his party by electing (and re-electing) a Republican Governor and a Republican legislature. This all happened, of course, in a state with an openly socialist Congressman.

After rising to the top of the heap in the pre-primary race for the nomination, Dean's campaign imploded spectacularly in an astounding spree of gaffes and mismanagement. The fact that Dean managed to blow through more than $50 million while winning only a single primary (in his home state) is a fact that still amazes and mystifies professionals.

Though some Republicans are trying to downplay expectations, there's little reason to be afraid of Howard Dean and plenty of reason to be gleeful at his ascent. Some worry that he knows how to raise money online. That's simply not true: people who worked for him knew how to raise money online and they went on to work for John Kerry last fall, for whatever good it did them.

In truth, I'm increasingly inclined to think of Dean's Chairmanship as a Machiavellian plot on the part of Hillary Clinton. Hillary's running to the right in her emerging Presidential campaign. I expect that, in 2006, she'll campaign for a limited number of Democrats while mostly keeping her head down and focusing on the New York Senate race. She'll do her best to get out of the way as Dean leads the lunatic-left straight off a cliff. Then, with the wacko wing out of the way, she'll have a much clearer path to the nomination and the White House.

More broadly, many Democrats may have welcomed Dean for similar but less Clinton-centric reasons. The great problem of the modern Democratic Party is this: it's increasingly being run by people who act as sound as though they're adherents of a left-wing version of the John Birch Society.

The members of Democratic Underground, the residents of Daily Kos, and all the rest of those new activists who occupy an increasingly influential place within the Democratic machine bear little or no resemblance to most of the people inhabiting reality who call themselves Democrats.

Republicans, largely as a result of problems with people like the Birchers and David Duke, have developed fairly robust defense against people who are, in essence, practicing classic entryist tactics. Democrats, for one reason or another, seem to be organizationally incapable of operating along the same lines.

If certain elements of the Republican Party had their way Alan Keyes would be a leading contender for the Presidency, Ann Coulter would have been seated next to George H.W. Bush at the Republican National Convention and Tom Tancredo would have been a featured speaker. The fact that these things are not fact is a testament to the ability of the Republican hierarchy.

Now, some might think that I'd rejoice at the possibility of the near-total destruction of the Democratic Party. But I don't. One party government is inherently unhealthy. The problem is, of course, that the present leaders of the national Democratic Party simply can't be trusted to govern, well, pretty much anything.

Can any serious person imagine Howard Dean as the President? The man's simply out of his depth and out of his mind.

One of the serious flaws of the Democratic Party is its seeming inability to produce candidates for high office who are not in obvious need of serious psychological treatment.

Think back to John Kerry for a moment. Now that the election is done and Democrats are under no obligation to defend the man out of partisan loyalty, I'd like to ask them: did you ever really imagine that the man could possibly have made even an average President? The man managed to be both as indecisive as a Woody Allen character ("You bet we might have!") and a fabulist of such proficiency as to give Stephen Glass a run for his money ("I'm proud of my Irish heritage!"). Four years before that we had Al Gore, a man whose lies took such increasingly bizarre turns that many, including myself, began to seriously contemplate the possibility that he was, in fact, a creature from an alternate (and oxygen-deprived) Earth with a substantially different history than our own.

Some may point out that (to date) Dr. Dean has, at the very minimum, managed not to get caught telling stories about how he won the Medal of Honor on Little Round Top and accusing those who doubt his story of questioning his patriotism. That's true. For now. About the best that can be said of Dean's tenure to date is that he hasn't burned down the DNC's headquarters: yet.

Meeting China's Threat

2005-02-24T23:24:00.000-07:00

The long-term threat to American security is China's forward march towards Superpower status. Terrorists like al-Qaeda can kill Americans, but they can't consign America to second place in the world. China can.

There are nearly a billion and a half people in China. If they attained even a relatively modest per capita GDP of $5000, they'd easily be able to fully challenge American economic dominance. However, there's no theoretical limit. Nations like South Korea went from subsistence-level economies to Western-level per capita incomes in two generations. China's about half-way through that process. There's literally no way to know where China's ascent could end.

I do not foresee a military threat from China in the near-term (save, perhaps, in the case of Taiwan). The Chinese are too smart for that. The real danger isn't that the Chinese will become militarily aggressive: it's that they won't. The real danger is that the Chinese will prove capable of overtaking the United States and becoming the world's preeminent power through peaceful competition, rather than force.

This threat demands a multi-pronged approach: military-economic-diplomatic-political.

The military response to China's threat is obvious. The Armed Forces need to be prepared to confront and beat China.

It's obvious to me that there's no point in even trying to build up the ground forces necessary to fight a land war in Asia. We can't possibly build an army to fight and defeat the Chinese on their home ground.

Remember: China's economy heavily relies on both exports for foreign exchange and imports of raw materials. You wouldn't think it from looking at a map, but China's economic power is dependent upon maritime trade.

Thus, if it ever comes to war against the People's Republic, the solution is self-evident: a naval blockade combined with the power to strike targets within China itself. If the United States Navy is capable of sinking the People's Liberation Army Navy to the bottom of the sea (and US Air Power capable of defending American forces from Chinese land-based air forces), then China's economic power will rapidly collapse.

On ground, China's military options are limited, at best in terms of a war against the United States. Who is China going to invade? Russia? India? Vietnam? Korea? Let them try.

A naval build-up is the long-term solution to ensuring America's ability to counter Chinese moves. The ideal mix would feature US Attack Submarines capable of sinking Chinese ships and US Guided Missile Submarines and Surface ships capable of striking inshore backed by a powerful US Carrier fleet, capable of both roles. The United States Navy could easily impose a near-total blockade against the Chinese coast.

On the economic front, we need to make a realistic assessment of China's economic position. For all of its future potential, the present economic significance of the People's Republic is heavily overrated. Japan, for example, holds nearly $720 Billion in US Bonds, as compared to China's $175 Billion. Taiwan is believed to hold nearly half of what the entire mainland holds.

Similarly, the total of US Exports to China in 2004 was only $35 Billion. US imports from China accounted for about $197 Billion.

The latter is, of course, an absurd number. Now, in principle, I'm opposed to trade protectionism. But to have a trade ratio like that is simply a sign that something is totally out of control. It makes good sense to begin to gradually place restrictions on US-China trade, before those numbers grow any further.

It is on the diplomatic front that action is most evidently called for. Chinese diplomats have recently taken to whining about attempts at "containment" against China. They ought to be whining: containment is exactly the approach called for here.

The emergence of the China threat has been a major factor in the recent strengthening of US-Japan ties. This avenue must be pursued further.

In particular, the United States needs to look at developing an anti-Chinese alliance with India. Every possible step to foster Indo-Chinese enmity should be taken. The United States should even, over the long-term, prioritize an alliance with India over an alliance with Pakistan, even if it means countenancing an Indians strike against Pakistan.

This is simply a matter of what each nation has to offer. Pakistan is probably only going to be useful as long as General Musharaff is in power. After that, Pakistan becomes the prime security concern of the United States. An Indian nuclear strike against Pakistan would probably solve a lot of issues for the US.

The possibility of a Russo-American alliance against China should also be explored, though I'm less optimistic about this prospect than I once was. Russia is in a long-term decline and it knows that it's incapable of resisting a Chinese advance. In particular, Siberia is being flooded with Chinese who've crossed the border to work and who are, in many areas, rapidly supplanting the original inhabitants.

Finally, there are political matters. It's worth remembering that China's recent prosperity has hardly been evenly spread. In essence, there's been an accumulating of wealth by a certain segment of individuals. This accumulation has regional issues too, I'd add. I recently read a story about a part of China were state officials were excited because people had recently begun using toilet paper in notable quantities. Not everywhere is Beijing or Shanghai.

Some days I wonder if it wouldn't be such a bad thing if we covertly worked on stirring up reactionary communist sentiments in rural China. The Cultural Revolution wasn't that long ago, I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to find some people eager to hang the bourgeoisie.

As well, China has internal issues with Moslem terrorists as we do. It wouldn't be all that bad to try and run a few covert operations to redirect terrorist sentiment in those areas.

It's worth remembering: China's advance could come quickly. We need to be prepared to act now, lest we wake up one day and discover ourselves to be living in a world dominated by China.

It's Time For Them To Go

2005-02-23T23:04:00.000-07:00

Pathetic. That's the only word I can think of to describe the budget that the Liberals brought before the House on Wednesday. It's nothing more than the nonsensical scribbling of exhausted and inferior minds.

The budget wasn't the product of a "moderate" or "pragmatic" thought process on the part of the government. It was the result of a no-thought process. It's a bunch of half-remembered promises only partially realized, at best.

Let's consider, for just a moment, some of the key items.

There's the military spending. The number is meant to sound impressive: $12 Billion over five years. To begin, that number is totally insufficient. Even if all $12 Billion actually went to the Armed Forces, that would mean a mere $2.4 Billion each year. It would mean a military budget of just a little more than 1% of the Gross Domestic Product (or something like half of the NATO average). And all of that, of course, applies only if they actually get the money.

However, if one actually examines the budget documents, we find that, next year, the Armed Forces are set to receive only an additional $500 Million. That's not enough for anything. Given that the Liberals claim that they intend to actually follow through upon the Prime Minister's insta-plan for five thousand extra troops (and presumably the money for that is in this additional funding), we might find the forces even more stretched than they are today.

But, of course, the point of the additional funding isn't to actually improve the military: it's to give the Liberals political cover if anyone complains about military funding in the next election. It's to try and paint the Tories as extremists. "We've already given the Armed Forces $12 Billion, the only reason you'd need more to that is to build Aircraft Carriers and Moon Bases," etc.

The "tax relief" contained in the budget is worse than a joke. Under this bold plan, the basic personal deduction will go up by $2000 over the next four years. That would mean a tax savings of, at the most, five hundred dollars or so for the average family.

Of course, the plan is deceptive. The basic personal deduction is indexed to inflation so, in any case, it would be going up by $1000 over the next few years. In other words, the grand "tax relief" in this budget means, at the most, $250 for a family.

The rest of the budget is a further example of the joy that the Liberals take in wasting the money that we earn. There's a billion dollars in this budget for their "National Child Care Program." Thus, we now get the joy of paying for other people to take care of other people's children. There's another few billion thrown at the Liberals' Kyoto fetish. There's $60 million in there for the CBC to produce news programs for no one to watch.

If the Tories aren't willing to vote against this garbage, they might as well get twenty of their MP's to resign and let the Liberals run candidates unopposed so that they can have a majority and we'll no longer have to listen to endless prattle about their "minority government."

In the last years of the Chrétien Government, it often seemed as though the Liberals were drifting aimlessly. We were told that this would all come to a spectacular end during the long reign of Paul the Great, who would lift our spirits and heal the pains of our souls. What stuff! This government has less fight in it than King Jean had in one finger. If we can't beat these clowns, then our choices are very rapidly reduced to surrender or rebellion.

Truly, during days like these, I often daydream about playing the role of Leo Amery in 1940 in the House of Commons. I just want to look across at the government benches. I want to stare across and quote Cromwell.

"You have sat here too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go."

By Popular Demand

2005-02-19T23:07:00.000-07:00

For some reason, totally unknown to me, there appears to be some great public need for me to weigh in on the issue of Jeff Gannon/Jeff Gurkhet/Alfonso Von Yamamoto. Presumably the question at hand is whether or not my presumed opposition to homosexual prostitution (a business to which Gannon was tied in some fashion, though his exact level of penetration of that profession remains a controversial matter) will take precedence over my slavish loyalty to the Bush Administration or whether or not it will be the other way around.

Well, as those who know me can well attest, nothing takes precedence over my devotion to the Holy Father. Thus, I'm forced to attempt a defense.

Frankly, there's a regrettable tendency (on both the left and right) to attribute to malicious conspiracy what can more easily be attributed to simple incompetence. That's my general feeling on the story of "Mr." Gannon.

Let's review the basic facts of the matter. Which is more believable? That Mr. Gannon managed to gain access to the White House press room as a result of a (Lavender?) conspiracy and was subsequently used as a tool to plant pro-Bush questions? Or is it more likely that Mr. Gannon, the employee of an admittedly obscure news service, simply didn't attract any real attention from anyone until certain elements of the left decided, because of their dislike of his perceived ideological slant, to subject him to a liberal anal exam?

It's not like we have laws requiring people to (assuming, for a moment, that the accusations are true), once they've entered the profession, walk around with T-Shirts labeled "gay prostitute." It's not like the sort of cursory background check normally done would come up with the names of the web domains that the guy once registered or what the Google caches for those sites held.

Truthfully, it's a little counter-intuitive to think that the evil and cunning Karl Rove would, in moving forward with his plan for Global Domination, solicit the services of a former gay prostitute for the purpose of having the man work for an obscure news site in order to have him plant questions at press conference. The Bush people may or may not be in league with the Devil, but no one thinks they're stupid (except for the people whose political knowledge is drawn exclusively from the collected works of Michael Moore, who understand that Republicans are both stupid and capable of masterminding secret global conspiracies so brilliant that only the equally magnificently intelligent Michael Moore is capable of unraveling the Machiavellian threads).

The left, as is predictable, is demanding all sorts of investigations. I don't blame them. If this happened in a Democratic White House, I'd surely be demanding the same. But that doesn't make them right, nor would it make me right. This entire thing is, to sum it up in a word, stupid.

The Hama Solution

2005-02-16T22:28:00.000-07:00

Ongoing problems in Iran, North Korea, and Syria demand a serious response. I'm sympathetic towards the position that, in order to send a message, the United States has to occasionally pick out someone and throw them up against the wall.

I call this the "Hama Solution."

Over the last few decades, Syria has been uniquely free of difficulties with Islamists. There's a reason for that. In the early 1980's, the Syrians suffered from difficulties caused by an Iranian-inspired branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. From the 1970's on, the Syrians had great difficulty in fighting off a rising Islamist tide. Finally, the dictator of Syria, Hafez al-Assad, decided that he'd had enough.

The city of Hama, a medium-sized Syrian city, was widely considered to be the center of the Islamist insurgency. Assad ordered his forces to level the city. The Syrian military shelled the city and used poison gas to flush out buildings where Islamists were believed to be hiding.

The total deaths were estimated to be somewhere in the range of 20,000. But the insurgency stopped and Assad's regime survived.

What the United States faces at the present time is a spiraling crisis. Not only are we confronted with the threat posed by al-Qaeda and the continuing terrorist insurgency in Iraq, but we also face a nuclear-armed North Korea, a Syrian-Iranian alliance, and the strong possibility of conflict with a Venezuela which is increasingly aligned with China and involved in the Civil War in Columbia. And, of course, we have the increasingly alarming Chinese menace lurking in the shadows.

There are too many problems to be dealt with even if the entire American Armed Forces were available. As it stands, of course, any major crisis would require massive call-ups of reserve units. The various partners in chaos are aware of this truth.

Frankly, I think that there's a belief that the United States operates within a certain threshold of violence. The opponents that the United States have confronted in recent years have possessed only a certain level of capability. There's a belief, I think, that a certain degree of military strength will render one invulnerable to challenge.

Iraq showed both the potential and the disadvantages of American power. The initial invasion showed the strength of the US Armed Forces. The lessons of the insurgency are not terribly relevant to these powers (save perhaps Syria), since, by the time they get a chance to fight the US in that way, they'll have been long removed from power. What they've learned is about the fragility of American public opinion and the unwillingness of the American public to tolerate losses.
Remember: overall total US losses in two years of fighting in Iraq remain under 1500. Most of those losses have been in a slow and steady trickle, too slow to shock the American public.

What would the result in the United States be if, somehow, five hundred Americans died in a single battle? What would the reaction be to the sinking of a Destroyer or even, God forbid, an Aircraft Carrier? What would the reaction be to the losses of a few dozen combat aircraft?

No one knows for certain. However, what we've seen of the patriotism of certain segments of society is not encouraging. What we've seen of the resolve on a Oprahfied general population is, likewise, disturbing. I have little doubt which way an extended debate about a confrontation with a nuclear power would end.

Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons because they believe that, once they have them, the United States won't dare to challenge them. Venezuela is buying advanced weapons from China because it believes that the combination of those weapons, and the tie with China, will forestall any American challenge to their bid for regional dominance. Syria is attempting to tie its fortune to Iran, hoping that the United States will decline to challenge any ally of an Iran that is the supreme regional power.

What's now required is something to shake up the situation. What's needed is something to convince the plotters of American power. Something needs to happen that reaches out to them and says, "Don't fuck with us."

What's called for is an action so extreme that the whole world will get the message. What's needed is an action which screams out, "attention must be paid."

Now: where would this strike come? The new Iranian-Syrian alliance makes drastic action in that part of the world undesirable, to say the least. It's questionable whether or not the US armed forces are, at present, capable of holding Iraq and invading both Iran and Syria. Lesser actions will bring the threat of extreme retaliation which would demand such a response.

The Venezuela situation is serious, but not one that presently demands extreme action. In any case, too few among the American public are presently aware of the menace posed by Hugo Chavez.

That leaves North Korea as the obvious target. It's really very simple. Attacking North Korea would do several things.
First, it would convince the world that the United States is willing to attack a nuclear power if necessary. This would remove the present-day illusion that the possession of nuclear weapons is a talisman that provides immunity from attack.

Naturally, this would require more than a simple pin-prick strike. In order to ensure the complete destruction of North Korea's nuclear war-making potential, it would be necessary to strike with nuclear weapons.

But it would be worth it.

If the United States used nuclear weapons to strike at and destroy North Korea's nuclear arsenal, it would send shockwaves around the world. Iran, Syria, and (most importantly) China would get the message. The whole of the world would get the message.

On Collective Punishment

2005-02-13T22:43:00.000-07:00

This is the sixtieth anniversary of the bombing on Dresden during the Second World War. I choose to write of this now because, as time goes on, it seems increasingly certain that the Allied bombings during the war will come to be regarded as atrocities on par with those of our enemies.

Once, this view was confined to a limited number of individuals, many of them Nazi apologists. That, however, has changed in recent years. With ever-increasing frequency, attacks such as the bombing of Dresden are condemned as "war crimes."

The war generation didn't see it that way. Or, at least, the idea that the bombings of German and Japanese cities were anything more than a routine operation of war was certainly a minority view. Those who did condemn them tended to be seen as distinctly out of the mainstream.

That's not the case anymore. As time has gone on, younger generations have come to regard mass bombings with a kind of horror. They're mentioned in our textbooks as a kind of embarrassment. Certainly, similar bombings would be politically impossible today. Those willing to defend what was done to Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, Tokyo, and other such places are the minority now.

Even most of those defenders are willing to speak up in support of these operations only within the context of their time ("they were necessary then but now, thankfully, we have precision guided munitions"). Ultimately, they seem damned to be consigned to the same category as the internment of the Japanese-Americans: a regrettable episode resulting out of the mores of a people less enlightened than we are today.

Obviously, I don't share that view. I believe that not only were the mass aerial bombardments of the war justified from a military point of view, but that they were also justified in a moral sense as well. To put it more briefly, I believe that Dresden was right.

As much as I admire the effort at democratization undertaken by President Bush, I believe that our efforts in the Middle East are made more difficult by our cultural unwillingness to accept a certain basic precept: no government, even a totalitarian one, truly rules without the consent of the governed.

True, many governments can rule without popular support. Equally true, many governments rule through fear. But these facts do not mitigate the essential truth that, at some level, any government which is allowed to endure in power carries with it the consent of those they govern. Not the support, but the submission. The willingness to acquiesce.

In this day and age we blame the government, and not the people. We forget (or, more accurately, we ignore) the essential truth that every government is, to a great degree, of the people. The people hold a collective responsibility for the actions of their government. When we punish the government, but not the governed, we unwittingly and undeservingly grant a pardon to the guilty.

One reason, I believe, for the success of the post-war construction of democracy in Germany and Japan is that the people of those places were thoroughly, and collectively, punished for the crimes that they had been complicit in. The bombings put the fear of God into the people and taught them a lesson which will not be forgotten for a long time.

The destruction of Dresden and other German cities, the firebombing of Japan, and the nuclear attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified not only in the military sense, but also in a broader sense: they were a moral reckoning for the German and Japanese people, the means by which they were forced to atone for their sins. When the United States and Britain struck the Germans and Japanese, they taught them the essential truth of their responsibility for their actions.

I fear that, in this war, we're failing to teach our enemies the hard lesson of accountability. I fear that we're failing to adequately demonstrate to them that they too will be held accountable for the crimes that are perpetrated with their willing collusion. Those, I would argue, who fail to actively resist the Islamists are, to one degree or another, complicit in their atrocities. They are valid targets of war.

In some ways, I think we would have had an easier time of things in the Middle East if we sent in a few waves of B-52's to flatten a few of their cities. I once wrote, and maintain, that the enemy needs to, at a very minimum, believe that we're capable of responding to a nuclear attack on their part by destroying Mecca with a dozen cobalt-jacketed nuclear bombs.

Our failing will, as exemplified by our newfound squeamishness about what we did to those German and Japanese cities, not only makes our task in this war more difficult, but it also places us in danger.

How to Save Star Trek

2005-02-09T22:23:00.000-07:00

Now, I'm going to be wandering slightly off my reservation again. Frankly, there are only so many "nuke the Gooks" stories that a person can write before growing tired. I'll still be writing about politics (and one can expect to see my lunacy emerge anew when some leftist insanity triggers my Hulk-like rage), but I'm also going to be talking about all sorts of other issues. I'm sure it will be hard to think of ways to call for executions while writing about films and television, but I'm also quite certain that I'll find a way to make it work.

One of my deepest beliefs about conservatism is that it cannot become ossified. One of the greatest dangers that conservatives face is becoming too firmly planted in one of two camps. There's one group which is so obsessed with ideology that it's unable to think beyond theory into the world of reality. There's another group which is trying to wall itself off from popular culture.

The problem with the tendency towards cultural bantuism among some, especially conservative Christians, is that it gives mainstream culture an excuse to simply write them off. It's striking that, to a very large degree, cultural institutions (most notably films and television) simply don't make an effort to even serve conservatives. They don't bother in part because they don't understand them and in part simply because they're well aware that they don't consume their products.

Thus, I'm going be devoting some of my time to offering conservative entertainment criticism. I don't intend to make this explicitly political (anymore than the liberalism of most of television is explicitly political most of the time), but rather to simply say what I think and, in so doing, hopefully impart a little bit of conservative wisdom.

With that, I want to turn to Star Trek. Those among my audience who've spent the most time studying my background are apparently well-aware of my affection for that show (I know this because I occasionally get hatemail deriding me as a "Nazi Trekkie Warmonger" instead of just a simple, plain, old fashioned "Nazi Warmonger"). I've been a fan since Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered before I entered Kindergarten. I can still remember watching early episodes from the first season.

I'll even admit to having attended two Star Trek conventions (though, in fairness to myself, I can fix the date of the last one as being about eleven years ago since, at that convention, I acquired a copy of the script for the then-unaired final episode of TNG). Though, I'll also admit that I lost interest sometime around the time Deep Space Nine ended. Since then I've watched minimally: the movies that have come out since then, the last episode of Voyager, the premiere of Enterprise and a few other episodes here and there.

What's constantly mystified me has been how colossally the Star Trek franchise has been mishandled in recent years. The event that precipitated this column, the cancellation of UPN's Enterprise, was, in my view, nearly a foregone conclusion from day one. Only the hardest of hard-core fans would be truly willing to stick around for years to rewatch the same thing for the sixth or seven hundredth time. The entire franchise grew stale towards the end of The Next Generation. It was revived in spirit, briefly, by the final years of Deep Space Nine, when the creators temporarily shook loose of their moorings. But, since then, it's been just further and further downhill.

The Star Trek property has massive potential. Massive. Instead of being used to turn out hackneyed third-rate television shows, it should be churning out billions of dollars in profits for everyone involved.

Why isn't it? That one's easy enough to answer: the creators are so beholden to a fan base which screams at even the slightest change that they're unwilling to do what's necessary to attract anyone but the hardest of hard-core fans to the show. They're so afraid of killing the thing by innovation that they've killed it by stagnation.

What should be done? The answer is obvious to me: the show needs to move off of starships for a while: and I don't mean to a space station.

The creators of Star Trek have created a massive and rich universe for people to explore. Why do we only see such a small portion of it? Why don't we go actually exploring? Not for aliens-of-the-week, but to learn a little more about what it's like to actually live in the Star Trek universe.

Instead of simply creating another "Starship-goes-exploring" show, the creators should explore how the show can be fused with other genres to create a new and innovative program.

Now, obviously, these concepts are going to take some tweaking. But they strike me as a good starting point for a conversation about just what could be done.

Star Trek: Smallville: The "Starfleet Academy" idea proposal has been floating around for years. At least since the time before Star Trek 6 was made. It's an idea with potential. If executed correctly, it might well work.

There's two ways of doing this: cast people to play famous characters when they were younger or create new characters. I tend to favor the former. Hence why I've designated this option "Smallville." I'd favor doing it with original series characters, since the later ones lack the fame and, in the case of the later generations, too far separated in age.

Star Trek: The West Wing: We've established a little bit about the Federation Government. Why don't we learn a little more? It strikes me as entirely possible that world of the Federation President, if well-written, would make for an interesting show. This would give us the opportunity to explore the more traditional areas of the Federation (particularly Earth, Luna, Mars, etc.) which we've yet to see explored.

CSI Vulcan: This is actually my personal favorite. Frankly, the CSI-genre and the Star Trek-genre strike me as the perfect two areas for the creation of a fusion product. Criminal investigations (and the ability of criminals for disguise) in the Star Trek-universe just seems like a perfect candidate for a future hit.

The solution for Star Trek is innovation. Combine new ideas. Explore the universe. Move beyond the already done.

Secular Social Conservatism

2005-02-06T19:55:00.000-07:00

One of the stranger assumptions of modern politics is that in order to be a social conservative you must be some sort of "religious nut." It goes without saying that I am not an adherent of this school of thought.

I find it to be idiotic when politicians (such as a certain Senator from Massachusetts) make the idiot statements along the lines of, "I think that abortion is evil, but I'm not willing to do anything about it because that would be imposing my religion." The strange implication of that statement is, of course, that any opposition to, for example, the agenda of the pro-abortion left, is rooted in religion. Even if one accepts the nonsensical view that the Constitution mandates an extreme and explicit separation between Church and State, that hardly means that there aren't any secular reasons to be against abortion.

Now, obviously, Christian conservatives do oppose gay marriage, abortion, and so on. That's certainly true. But do you have to be a member of the religious right to think that, for example, abortion is a bad idea?

I'm sure it'll be a surprise to few when I describe myself as not being particularly religious. I read the Bible and I believe in God, but I don't regularly go to Church. In a broad sense, I'd consider myself to be both a Christian and a Protestant, but that's about as far as the thing would go. Frankly, I find myself uncomfortable in the face of what is generally thought of as "the religious right." If you ask me about my personal relationship with Jesus Christ, I'm likely to mumble something and look away.

Yet, still, I generally adhere to a "religious right" standpoint on most social issues. I'm against abortion. I'm against gay marriage. I'm for prayer in public schools.

Think about it for a second. The "God cries when children die" argument against abortion is, in fact, the weakest argument against the practice. There is another, entirely secular, case against abortion just waiting to be made.

The most obvious is this: legal abortion, over the long term, certainly will result in a reduced level of population. Some will raise the specter of "back-alley abortions" which, certainly, would occur in a system where the practice was proscribed. However, simple common sense dictates that fewer abortions, over the long term, means more people.

Now, I'll admit that I'm not 100% pro-life. I wouldn't call myself pro-choice, either. But, in truth, I'm not sure if the total illegalization of abortion is the best way to go. Increasingly, I find myself in sympathy with Bill Clinton's "safe, legal, and rare" statement. In sum, it means: legal abortion, but every possible restriction placed upon it. In addition, I'd offer incentives against abortion and in favor of adoption.

This isn't because I'm terribly concerned with the religious aspects of abortion. It's because I believe that, over the long term, fewer abortions means more people which, in turn, means a larger economy, more potential scientists, more potential soldiers, more potential leaders, and greater potential national power.

Yet, somehow, people believe that all anti-abortion criticism can be written off as being "religious" (since religious speech, apparently, is the political equivalent of a sandwich made by Typhoid Mary at a restaurant).

By the same token, I'm absolutely against both gay marriage and civil unions for a simple reason: I believe that allowing them will weaken the structure of traditional marriage which, in turn, I believe to be a vital institution for our society. For me, at least, it isn't a matter of "God says it's wrong", it's simply a matter of what I believe works and what I believe doesn't.

I, for one, think that it's moronic to believe that we can change an institution that dates back thousands of years and not expect it to have serious effects. (Now, of course, some gay advocates now apparently embrace the broken-windows theory of divorce, claiming that, since marriage is already in trouble, they can jump right on in). It's not religious, it's simply a conservative instinct (most change=bad) combined with a further aversion caused by the fact that most of the people attempting to shove this gay measure down the throats of the citizenry happen to be liberals and are therefore my blood-enemies.

Why Hillary Wants Dean

2005-02-03T19:37:00.000-07:00

I can't believe how blind everyone is. There's been a lot of comment about how the Clintons have failed to act against the possibility of former Vermont Governor Dr. Howard Brush Dean III becoming the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Dick Morris called the words "Chairman Howard Dean" the, "shortest suicide note in history." What everyone's missed is this: that's exactly what Hillary and Bill both want.

Let's face facts: the far-left wing of the Democratic Party is presently ascendant. If a relatively moderate Democrat like Tim Rohmer tried to take charge of the Democratic National Committee today, they'd be eaten alive by the collection of special interests who virtually own the Democratic Party.

The far left of the Democrat Party is convinced that the road to victory lies in strident ultra-liberalism. They believe that the reason they lost in 2004 was that the leaders of the party failed in making their opposition to Bush loud enough. They've been overtaken with a kind of psychosis, the kind of periodic madness which often results from the hard defeats. In their delusional state, they believe that they lost in spite of Michael Moore, MoveOn.org and the rest, not (at least in part) because of them. They think that traditional Democrats like Joe Lieberman are the problem.

Thus, having achieved virtual control of the party hierarchy, the far-left is engaged in a process of attempting to attain revolutionary purity. They're so convinced of their own self-righteousness that they cannot be unconvinced, only driven from power. Jacobins are unappeasable.

Hillary and Bill know all of this. They also know that, for Hillary to be able to win in 2008, she needs several things. She needs an unopposed (or nearly unopposed) path to the nomination. She also needs to be able to move to the center and even the right in some cases. So long as the far-left is in control of the party, she will be able to do neither.

So: why are the Clintons standing aside for Howard Dean? Easy: they know that he's likely to fail, probably spectacularly, and that he's likely to discredit most of the radical left and leave the party base so eager for victory that they'd be willing to overlook any hearsay on the issues.

The Clintons (but especially Bill) are politically savvy people. They've got a finger on the political heartbeat of the nation. The key for Hillary to win the Presidency is for her to position herself in the most popular ground on a number of key issues.

In particular, look for her to revive Bill's old "safe, legal, and rare" mantra on the issue of abortion, with an emphasis on the latter. I would not be at all shocked to see her embrace every possible legal restriction on abortion, short of an actual ban. This position would put her solidly in the center of American political opinion which, upon the whole, does not wish to see a return to the "back-alley" abortions of the past, but which is not, in any sense, "pro-abortion."

Also look for her to move to the right on immigration. She's already begun this process, talking about her opposition to illegal immigration. Look for her to go further, explaining that she supports illegal immigration but demanding stronger enforcement against illegals.

Finally, look for her to embrace the most popular ground on the issue of gay marriage. She'll be opposed to gay marriage, but for civil unions. If it becomes necessary, she'll probably even support a version of the Federal Marriage Amendment which embraces this position.

Of course, doing this and sailing to the nomination will be exceedingly difficult if the ultra-left wing of the party: Michael Moore, Democrat Underground, Daily Kos, etc, are not someone undermined and defeated. Thus, she can let them win now and lose now.

Anyone with any knowledge of Howard Dean must be well aware that he'd be an absolute disaster for the Democratic Party. He's basically the average former Governor of a small and liberal state who managed to stumble into a near-successful bid for the Democratic Nomination through a combination of strange occurrences. Once placed under the microscope, his campaign imploded as quickly and as spectacularly as any in living memory.

He's remembered now for the "Dean Scream", but focusing on that ignores what really killed him: his repeated gaffes and the horrible mismanagement of his campaign. We forget now, but his campaign managed to blow through over $50 Million while sinking without a trace. It takes a special kind of incompetence to blow that much money on a Presidential campaign while winning only a single primary.

Thus, come 2006, Dean is likely to lead the Democratic Party to their third disaster in three major election cycles. With Howard Dean in charge of the Democratic National Committee (and, given his personality, probably very publicly in charge), I think that the chances of sixty Republican seats in the Senate is rather high.

It's really very simple: Hillary moves gradually rightwards on a number of issues and keeps her head down while running for re-election. In November of 2006, the Democratic Party as a whole flies off a cliff while Hillary coasts to re-election in New York.

In the months after the election, the radical left is ousted from control. Democratic desperation to win reaches a fever pitch. Hillary then declares in early 2007 and starts raising a truly massive amount of money, perhaps even money that was held back from the party in 2006 by key donors. With any luck, the remaining candidates are either going to be badly positioned to run or they're not going to have a chance.

After all: who are the most formidable potential challengers to Hillary for the nomination in 2008? Kerry might run, but he's done for. No one will remember who John Edwards even is by 2006. Three of the best plausible alternatives to Hillary are New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Virginia Governor Mark Warner, and Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen. It's probably worth noting that both Richardson and Bredesen are going to be up for re-election in 2006 in states which are hardly traditional Democratic strongholds. A lot of people believe that Warner might run for the Senate in 2006 as a prelude to a Presidential campaign. All of their chances would be stopped cold by a 2006 defeat.

The sort of disaster which Howard Dean might lead the party into probably cannot be understated. The man is a perfect example of how dangerous the utterly incompetent are when convinced of their own virtues. A hard-left campaign in 2006, led by Dean, Michael Moore, and the rest of their ilk would result in a total meltdown for the party.

Of course, winning the nomination doesn't guarantee Hillary the Presidency. Her strategy also carries with it a number of risks. Most notably, the risk that the Republican storm of 2006 will turn into the Republican tsunami of 2008, with the GOP picking up momentum as time goes on. It's also possible that the irreconcilable elements of the hard left are so deeply embedded in the Democratic Party that purging them will prove impossible.

Naturally, I'll be keeping an eye on all of this.

The Wacky World of Adam Yoshida

2005-02-01T13:00:00.000-07:00

While we're waiting for Adam to come up with the last word on the Iraqi elections, here's what his many fans have been saying about him over the last month.

World O'Crap (January 30) - "Our third mystery guest was indeed Adam Yoshida, like Charlotte Smith said. Oh, and if you go here, you can read the entry where Adam confesses that he's really not a wealthy, American Harvard student (and not even Tom Clancy), but instead a self-loathing Canadian slacker living with his parents. It's amusing, but in a really pitiful way."

(The original poser was set here, and there's a lively Adam-oriented discussion in the attached comments. Sample: "I don’t know what it says about our capacity to become de-sensitized to the ravings of these wingnuts, when you get to the point where you just shrug and say “That Adam. What can you do.” But he’s said worse than that. At least he’s advocating adopting these children and not killing them.")

Docwebster (January 28) - "Remember Adam Yoshida? You know, this guy? He has reaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllly gone over the edge, now."

(Best comment: "Somebody needs a mental enema, it seems.")

The Hive (January 19) - "What gets my goat about Adam Yoshida is his fervent support for military action and torture, all the while sitting at home in the comfort of what I understand to be his parents’ basement. Therefore I am starting a DRAFT ADAM YOSHIDA campaign for the US Military! Please – let’s let him know he should put his money where his mouth is, and go do his civic duty in Iraq – that he has thus far left up to others."

Follow-up the next day: the first "Draft Adam Yoshida" poster.

Candlelight (January 6) - "If George W. Bush is a political reformer and a success story, then I am Adam Yoshida."

Famous Last Words

2005-01-29T22:18:00.000-07:00

Well, the election looks to be going well.

We'll know more in a few hours.

Pop Culture and the Right

2005-01-28T22:08:00.000-07:00

One of the few true issues I have with some sectors of the conservative movement is the puritan tendencies of some social conservatives. In particular, I think that one of the stupidest aspects of a great deal of the social conservative right is its knee-jerk reaction to that trio of horrors: violence, sex, and profanity in movies and on television.

Now, I'll grant you that it's likely that the present moral state of television has resulted in a coarsening of our culture and some erosion of our moral values. I'll grant that. I'll also fully admit that we're seeing something of a slippery slope effect. I'm barely old enough to half-remember the days when The Simpsons were considered cutting edge and controversial. Now their DVD's are filed in the "family" section at the local video store.

But, to put it bluntly: sitting on your ass and whining about it isn't going to do anything. I recently read a list of complaints field by something called the "Parents' Television Council" which, so far as I can tell, is a group of eighty-something women in tennis shoes watching television shows in a desperate, grasping effort to determine how many times the word "dick" is uttered. It's a complete waste of time.

Instead of throwing hissy fits about the evils of television and popular culture, the social right needs to learn to embrace it and turn it to its advantage. One major reason why the Hollywood lefts feels so free in attacking the beliefs of conservative and Christians is that they know, for the most part, they aren't buying their products anyways.

It's a freeing thing, to know that you owe people nothing. When I ran for School Board, I knew that the Teacher's Unions were never going to support me, so I felt free to say whatever I felt like about them. In view of the fact that I lost, the wisdom of that strategy may be questionable, but that doesn't change the reality of the impulse.

I don't sleep much and I have a grossly-overpriced PVR, so I watch a lot of television. I can tell you, there's plenty for conservatives to watch and enjoy.

To begin, I'd encourage conservatives to watch Boston Legal on Sundays, where the fact that the character played by William Shatner (a role he won an Emmy for playing!) is a Republican has been allowed to stand without negative attacks.

But, more broadly, I'd encourage conservatives to try out any of a number of shows I watch fairly regularly: Battlestar Galactica (on SciFi in the States, Space in Canada, and Sky One in the UK) is easily the best new science fiction show in years. The Dead Zone (USA Network in America, Space in Canada) is another first-rate show (though it's between seasons at the moment, you can pick up previous years on DVD).

In addition (I'm embarrassed to admit this), I never miss The O.C., which could be fairly rated as my favourite show on television at the moment. Other first-rate programs include Scrubs, Lost, Arrested Development (the funniest show on television), The Gilmore Girls, and Joan of Arcadia. The CSI and Law and Order families are also worth watching most of the time (though, I admit, Without a Trace is my personal favourite)

Now, I'm not the world's biggest fan of the last one (I've probably seen about half of the episodes), but I find it bewildering (to say the least) why conservatives have failed to embrace that show. A television show about a girl who talks to God (and has God give her advice that verifiably improves her life) and conservatives aren't holding it up as an exemplar? Only a certain sort of myopia could result in this.

Further down the list is 24 (though, I've yet to miss an episode this season), only because I'm still angry over the utterly stupid plot twist that ruined the entire second half of the initially-perfect second season for me (the "evil white men trying to start a war in the Middle East" stuff).

Even The West Wing, long a liberal fantasy-land, has managed to break into new ground this year, finally becoming interesting again with the coming of a new Presidential race (as a side note, I now expect Alan Alda's Republican character to win the election, a prediction I make based upon the laws of casting economy. When he showed up last week and it was revealed that his chief aides are now played by Stephen Root and the woman who played the wife on Home Improvement I said to myself, "yeah, he'll win).

So, basically, my message is as follows: lighten up and watch some more TV.

Taking the Fight to the Enemy

2005-01-26T16:57:00.000-07:00

Let me step back and propose a "big thought" on how to win the Global War on Terrorism.

Simply put, the real long-term threat to American security isn't so much the individual insurgent as it is those ideologists, financiers, and politicians who help to motivate, train, and equip the individual Islamist. The Islamists themselves can be fought upon the battlefield or caught by internal security. It's the infrastructure, the whole awful edifice of Islamism, that's the much greater problem.

The terrorists fight asymmetrically. We try to fight them symmetrically. In other words, where they're armed, we fight them with arms. Where they engage in merely criminal activity, we try to fight them using criminal laws. This is flawed thinking.

Whenever we hear of asymmetrical warfare, we hear of it in the context of it being used against the United States. But, I ask you, why couldn't the United States fight its own enemies using asymmetrical tactics as well?

What I propose is this: in addition to using force to bring armed Islamists to heel, we should also commence the use of force against unarmed Islamists as well. Those who spread enemy propaganda, those who participate in the financing of the enemy, and those who choose to stand in proximity to the enemy are valid and legitimate targets of war. Those who retail or purchase pro-Islamist materials are legitimate targets of war. Those who donate money to terrorist groups, even to their ostensibly humanitarian or political wings, are legitimate targets as well.

Turn the tactics of the terrorists back against them. Those in the Islamic world know which Mosques are affiliated with al-Qaeda. They know which newspapers are terrorist mouthpieces. They know which politicians are pro-terrorist. They know (or can find out) who has donated money to terrorist causes and who has Jihadi material in their homes.

My plan is simple: we should wage a brutal campaign of terror against the terrorists themselves.

The local Mosque is filled with Islamists and its preacher constantly calls for Jihad? Well, then it sounds like a promising target for a car bomb.

A newspaper prints anti-Americans lies and declares that fighting Americans in Iraq is an "Islamic duty"? It sounds like the editor is practically begging to be assassinated.

A little newspaper stand sells pro-Jihadist materials? An offense like that might not quite call for an assassination. But it would be worth it to burn the place down in the dead of the night.

A television station broadcasts a telethon for 'martyrs'? It sounds to me like an improvised explosive device left at its gate might do some good. Same for the bank which handles the deposits.

Now, I know this last point is going to be controversial, but I'll raise it anyways: adult male children of major terrorists are, almost certainly, going to turn out to be terrorists themselves. Even if they aren't, anything less than full cooperation with American intelligence services on their part is a sign of their complicity in the crimes of their family members. The same goes for spouses. It may even go for daughters. Hell, if we can kidnap or kill their grandparents, I'm all for it. Anything to get at the Islamists.

Now, obviously, some senior terrorists won't care for their families at all. That's fine. As obviously, simply killing them would be a sub-ideal solution. Instead, US intelligence should keep them under surveillance and, when a good moment arises, kidnap them and remove them to a secure location within the United States. They might then (especially minor children) be held as a means of securing the surrender of certain individuals or, better still, as part of a plan to force certain Islamists to betray their comrades-in-arms.

Now, I'm sure some people will find the idea of kidnapping the children of Islamists to be morally objectionable. So be it. So far as I'm concerned, the Islamists forfeited their right to be parents the moment they first spoke a word against the United States. That they have been allowed to continue to reproduce to this point is less a reflection of their continuing rights in this area and more of our own laziness and timidity. They'll all be better off being raised by good Christian families in the US of A.

The terrorists are our enemies. They must be more than defeated: they must be exterminated in totality. We must erase the memory of their presence from this planet. We must not only thwart their plans, but we must wipe them out, and everyone who shares, supports, or sympathizes with their ideology as a means of cleansing our race of its sins.

Total war, relentless aggression without the slightest trace of mercy, is what is called for in the face of this enemy.

I Think DHS Stopped One

2005-01-25T10:06:00.000-07:00

This is an important story.

Four Chinese illegals reported as potential terrorists are found aboard a plane being illegally flown by a man of Syrian birth who owns a flight school which just happened to have trained an al-Qaeda member who was involved in the precursor plot to 9-11 (the 1995 plan to blow up twelve planes).

The Iraqi Miracle

2005-01-23T21:00:00.000-07:00

In a week I will either look very smart or very foolish, but I'm going to go ahead and venture a prediction: the Iraqi elections will be an Earth-shattering success. They're going to prove all of the nay-sayers absolutely wrong. By the end of next week, I think, we'll have seen, in the matter of months, free elections take place in Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories, and Iraq.

If there was any single moment where I became convinced that the Iraqi elections would be a success, it was while watching the various election commercials now being broadcast in Iraq. One of them in particular features a single Iraqi stepping forward into an ally, only to be confronted by three insurgents. He stops. A man and a woman then step forward. The woman, seeing the terrorists, grabs the man's arm and instinctively steps back. There's a pause. Then more men and women step forward. They move in such numbers that the insurgents, recognizing that overwhelming strength of the people, decide to step away.

Ultimately, the sheer mass of the Iraqi people will expose the fraudulency of the insurgency. A few hundred men playing with bombs, a few hundred killers, and a few thousand wannabes dressed up in black are not an army. They are not the voice of the people.

The elections will choose a new government. Iraq will be free.

While I have various reasons for venturing this prediction, one is particularly central to my thinking: the media conventional wisdom says that the elections will be a disaster and, in the end, the conventional wisdom among the mainstream media is wrong roughly 99% of the time. If the media things something is going to go wrong, everything will probably be fine. If the media things something is wonderful that usually means it's on the verge of disaster.

Let's consider, for a moment, the individual concerns about the election.

First, there's the worry that the election will result in the creation of an Iranian-style theocracy. The media would particularly enjoy this outcome for its irony. The problem is thus: it's not going to happen.

The whole "elect-a-theocracy" concern, the "Algeria option" for lack of a better word, is born out of a complete misread of the Iraqi political situation. To begin because Shiites only make up 60% of the population they'd have to be absolutely united behind a single faction in order to make such an outcome possible. The only problem is: they're not.

There are three main Shiite candidate lists heading into the election;

One, led by Prime Minister Allawi, is basically secular and Western-oriented. If they win, we've no worries at all in this regard.

Another, endorsed by Grand Ayatollah Sistani, is led by a former nuclear scientist who fled into Iran after being persecuted by Saddam but who also abandoned Iran for Britain after finding the Mullahs to be as oppressive as Hussein. He hardly sounds like a would-be theocrat.

The third, the most obvious candidate to play the villain, is named the "Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq." They too, however, have proved to be cooperative with the United States and, indeed, were supportive of the US invasion.

It's true that the SCIRI has extensive ties to Iran, but they're just one faction among many. Given that the elections are being conducted by proportional representation, it's highly unlikely that any faction will win a majority. Whatever government emerges is going to be a coalition.

Others have expressed concern that low Sunni turnout will put the nation under total Shiite control. This remains a valid concern. However, I expect that the Sunni turnout will be much higher than expected. In large measure, I think that the reports of "Sunni problems" are the result of an obvious tendency on the part of the Western media to view foreign tribes and religious blocs and absolutely monolithic and to report on them as though they were. There will be some areas where insurgents manage to disrupt voting by the Sunnis but, for the most part, I expect Sunni turnout to greatly exceed expectations.

Violence is, of course, a concern. But, from all appearances, the capabilities of the terrorists in Iraq extend only so far. They might be able to kill a few hundred people, at the most. But I doubt if that will be enough to stop the election.

That may sound cold but, remember, this is a part of the world where hundreds of people are routinely killed during religious pilgrimages. A few hundred dead is, I think, hardly too high a price to pay for freedom. Iraqis aren't like Westerners. They're acclimatized to terror and they're better able to resist it.

In fact, given the security measures to be taken, one wonders if the insurgents will be able to meaningfully increase (or even maintain) their pace of attacks during the election.

This election will be an important step in the implementation of the Freedom Doctrine that President Bush propounded during his Inaugural Address. People want to live in freedom and they'll stand together to get it. Free governments, even those we don't like, are preferable to tyranny.

I have a second prediction as well: as soon as the elections are successful, every columnist who predicted doom will be mining their own work to prove that what happened was what they'd advocated all along.

Santorum's Prophecy

2005-01-20T17:10:00.000-07:00

Almost two years ago Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum was raked over the coals by the liberal media for his prediction that a decision by the Supreme Court declaring anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional would eventually lead to a push for, among other things, legalized polygamy. Others shared Santorum's pessimism noting that, once marriage was expanded from its traditional "one man, one woman" definition, there'd be no legal grounds to defend against a legal challenge from would-be polygamists.

The general response from the left on this issue has been less than intellectually honest. Most of the time, supporters of gay marriage will simply dismiss people warning of legalized polygamy are fearmongering homophobes. When pressed, the explanations offered by even the most eloquent supporters of gay marriage as to why allowing it wouldn't lead polygamy are, to say the least, less than convincing.

Andrew Sullivan's explanation (as related by Charles Krauthammer in a 1996 issue of Time) is that, "homosexuality is a 'state,' while polygamy is merely 'an activity.' Homosexuality is 'morally and psychologically' superior to polygamy."

Jonathan Rauch, probably the most convincing advocate of gay marriage, has an equally hard time rationally reconciling his support of gay marriage with opposite to polygamy. He argues that it would violate the principle of monogamy (chuckle) and then simply claims that, "It's a very dangerous, destabilizing situation." He then arbitrarily declares, "It is not consistent with equal pursuit of happiness."

Frankly, as an opponent of gay marriage, I find it very hard not to find the humour in all of this. When not blinded by their own personal prejudices, which are far more fundamental to their belief system than the bigotry of the loudest homophobe, even men like Sullivan and Rauch can see the truth- some things just ain't right.

It goes without saying that, in the end, I think that Santorum is more likely to be proven right than any of the homosexual activists who swore up and down that gay marriage would never, never lead to the legalization of polygamy. This is a traditional pattern.

We forget just how much society has changed in a short period of time. I'm still a young man, but even I can remember a time when society wasn't entirely inundated with gay propaganda and when the idea of gay marriage was dismissed, even by pro-gay people, as a bad joke. Years ago people who warned against various gay rights measures often claimed that, unless action was taken to stop the forward thrust of the gay movement, homosexual marriage would become legal. These were generally dismissed as the lunatic rantings of the kook fringe.

Of course, when the radical left screams that they'd "never" try something, they generally mean, "it's coming up right next."

The strongest evidence of this can be found in Canada where, less than two years after the first activist judge legalized gay marriage, the Federal Government has undertaken an urgent study of the potential legal and social policy ramifications of legalized polygamy. Read that carefully, for it contains an important hint: they don't appear to be studying how they can stop its legalization; they're studying how to accommodate it.

Mark Steyn likes to talk about how these things become inevitable once we, "start talking about polygamy in a nuts-and-bolts, incremental, legal-harmonisation, partners'-benefits, insurance-agent kind of a way." He's exactly right. Having accepted gay marriage (and, by most appearances, the majority of the Canadian public is willing to at least tolerate it), we've no sensible argument against polygamy, save our own gut instincts that it's wrong. But, if we were listening to our gut instincts, we wouldn't have let gay marriage be legalized in the first place.

In all likelihood, the left will role with the punches. This is especially true in Canada since there the primary people seeking legalized Polygamy are going to be members of The Religion of Peace™. Liberals will explain that they're "personally opposed" to polygamy (just like they're "personally opposed" to abortion, gay marriage, and so forth) but that, "we have to accept that this is a matter of minority rights."

Frankly, as an act of protest, I think that we ought to attempt to construct massive "marriage chains" designed to make the work of the government in administering marriages and sorting out benefits simply impossible.

Think about it for a second. If we legalize polygamy I suspect that, at the very minimum, people will have to be allowed to have four spouses (since that's what Sharia permits). In Islam and Mormonism it works because, of course, only men are permitted to marry multiple women. In the age of equality, we'd have to permit women to marry multiple men. The result could be humorous marital chaos.

For example: Man "A" marries Woman "B" who, in turn, is married to both Man "C" and Woman "D" who themselves are married to Men "E", "F", "G", and "H." Man "H" is, in turn, Married separately to both Man "A" and Woman "B." Man "G" in addition to being married to both Man "C" and Woman "D" is married to Man "F." Try processing those tax returns.

China's Threat

2005-01-19T22:30:00.000-07:00

Quietly, and beneath the radar of the vast majority of Americans, the People's Republic of China is building up its armed forces to pose a true threat to the United States. The latest sign of this danger comes in the form of reports that the Chinese are looking into acquiring up to forty TU-22 "Backfire" bombers from Russia.

If you're a fan of Tom Clancy, or if you're familiar with the operations of the US Navy during the later stages of the Cold War, the very name should send a shiver down your spine. The Backfire is powerful, long-range, supersonic bomber capable of carrying a number of powerful anti-ship missiles.

In the form of the TU-22, the Soviet Union devised the ultimate anti-carrier weapon. The concept was simple: these bombers would reach out into the Ocean to assault either US troop convoys or Carrier Battle Groups. The bombers would dash in at maximum speed, fire their missiles at supersonic speed, and overwhelm American defenses in a massive barrage.

These weapons were considered dangerous enough the F-14 Tomcat, the AIM-54 air-to-air missile, and the AEGIS air defense system were primarily designed to guard against them. Only through careful concentration of firepower would a US Carrier group be able to overcome a massed bomber strike of the sort that the Soviets were capable of and which the Chinese are apparently reaching for.

If the Chinese are seriously thinking about buying these bombers it's an obvious sign that China's entire defense posture is being oriented towards an assault on Taiwan. The TU-22 is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a top-tier ground attack aircraft. It has one primary purpose: attacking and overwhelming US Carrier Groups.

Put into operation, Chinese-run squadrons of Backfires would pose the first serious threat to American Carriers since the end of the Cold War.

Worse still, the Chinese have embarked upon a $10 Billion program of Submarine acquisition. While the exact quality and composition of the force the Chinese are seeking to create is unknown, it's hard not to be disturbed by the obvious: the amount of money proposed would buy roughly seven Virginia-class Submarines at American prices. Just what will it buy China?

This must be put in the broader context of the broader challenge to American power being put forward by China. A recent report prepared for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld detailed the Chinese effort to gain control of strategic "chokepoints" on the world's waterways. Most notably, as part of this effort, the Chinese have begun work on a canal (set to be controlled by China) which will allow ships to bypass the often-hazardous Straits of Malacca.

To make things even more concerning, a holding company owned by the Chinese has managed to take de facto control of the Panama Canal.

The truly alarming thing about all of this is just how smart the Chinese have been about all of this. They aren't going to behave like the Soviet Union and have their Premier pounding his shoe on the desk at the UN. They're going to smile a knowing smile as they kindly step towards us with their knife in their pocket.

What's happening is very obvious: the Chinese are working quietly, but steadily, towards the day when their power will be so overwhelming as to make any challenge prohibitive. When they move against Taiwan (and it is only a matter of when, not if) they'll be powerful enough that American participation in the defense of Formosa will mean the sure loss of at least one Carrier and ten thousand American lives. Faced with that sort of danger, virtually any American President will concede the day.

The thing being ignored in all of that is this: the day that China conquers Taiwan with the acquiescence of the United States and Japan will be the day that China becomes the master of all Asia.

Extreme solutions are the only ones likely to solve this problem. The Chinese have moved so quickly and so stealthily that our only chance to stop them is to take a roll of the dice on any of a number of risky solutions. Either we begin an immediate anti-Chinese military build-up and commit to defend the rest of Asia in the event of aggression by China or we begin to explore less orthodox means of reprisal.

I, for one, suggest that we begin by asking ourselves if, in the case of Taiwan, "proliferation" is such a bad word after all.

American Martyrs

2005-01-17T22:48:00.000-07:00

Hossam Armanious, his wife, and their two children were ritually slaughtered in their home and the national media, with a few brave exceptions, has been virtually silent. We all know the reason. If Hossam Armanious had been a Moslem who was killed by Christian fanatics, or a homosexual killed by homophobes, his name would have led every national newscast for weeks. Instead, unless we work to honor the memory of these American martyrs, his name will be forgotten and his courage unhonoured.

Let's briefly review the facts of the case. Mr. Armanious, a Coptic Christian, received death threats as a result of anti-Islamic comments he made on an internet website. Several weeks later he and his entire family just happen to be tortured and murdered in just the fashion dictated by the Koran, "Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers [in fight], smite at their necks; At length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly [on them]."

Armanious' oldest daughter Sylvia, who had a cross tattooed on her wrist, just happened, according to some reports, to suffer repeated stab wounds in that area. We don't know the truth of that matter because, for some reason, the release of autopsy reports has been delayed.

The media (with the complicity of law enforcement who are, without doubt, frightened of becoming the targets of the legions of tolerance) is spinning the notion that this might have been a 'robbery.' Bullshit. Can you think of any other robbery where a family of four was bound, beaten, and then had their throats slit? Does that sound like any simple robbery that you've ever read about? Does that sound likely?

Doesn't it seem more likely that the killers of the family, given what we know, were Moslems? It makes a great deal of sense to me. The behavior of everyone involved gives us no reason to think otherwise. The evidence suggesting that this crime was committed by Moslems is more compelling than anything else that has been publicly released or even suggested. If evidence to the contrary existed, do you think that there would be any hesitation at all in leaking and printing it?

It looks like Hossam Armanious is the American Theo Van Gogh: the victim of a violent and dangerous religion which has been welcomed into the West without adapting to the culture of the West. In many ways, if Armanious was killed by Moslems, it's much worse than what happened to Van Gogh.

In Van Gogh's case at least he had to make a movie before he managed to attract the attention of the Jihadists. Armanious, it appears, did nothing more than say things on an internet chat site. Think about it for a second. As alarming and enraging as what happened to Theo Van Gogh was, at least it fit with our conventional idea of "How the World Works™." To get assassinated, many of us figured, you have to reach a certain level of prominence.

It wouldn't shock me if this was the work of an organized terrorist cell. Their approach is a logical one. It's relatively easy for a properly financed, organized, and well-led group to commit a crime like that, get away, and strike another day. Moreover, were it a terrorist attack, the strategy is perfect. In fact, it's something I've long advocated in reverse.

It's really quite simple. Many people in the Islamic world feel free to support Islamism because it comes without cost. They know that the guy selling terror DVD's in Karachi or the Cleric issuing fatwas in support Jihad isn't going to be a target for American bombs. So, as a result, they feel free to express anti-Americanism freely and to provide support to terrorists which doesn't cross a certain threshold.

Basically, in what I call a "Bottom Up" strategy, that assumption would be shattered. Instead of spending time trying to track down and kill the top members of al-Qaeda, which is hard, resources would be devoted to killing people at the absolute bottom of the chain. Instead of blowing up empty al-Qaeda camps, we'd blow up the banks known to launder terrorist money, along with everyone inside. Instead of trying only to kill al-Qaeda's senior fighters, we'd also regard anyone who expressed even the least support for terror as a target of opportunity.

One wonders if that might be the strategy here. Deploy a small al-Qaeda cell against a number of different people who've simply expressed negative views towards Islam. When it's done, announce what you've done to the world. Explain that everything is on al-Qaeda's radar screen and that, while the terror group doesn't possess Aircraft Carriers or Stealth Bombers, it can strike where it wishes.

If, indeed, Armanious' killers were Moslems and this fact is publicly revealed, it's bound to have a chilling effect on speech about the true nature of Islam and its crimes against humanity. I know at least a few people who are already looking over their shoulders. Were this to be confirmed, I suspect that more than a few bloggers would become more circumspect in their comments.

Frankly, the whole thing makes even me nervous. I'm well aware that I'm hardly among the top-tier of bloggers but, then again, all Hossam Armanious apparently did was post on a message board. If this is confirmed, it cannot fail to have a chilling effect on speech about Islam.

The media needs to report this. People need to understand. If the killers weren't Moslems (or, at least, there's real evidence that they weren't) they need to report it and spread it wide. If they were, they need to report it too. This needs to be a big deal.

We cannot beat the terrorists if we lie to ourselves about their nature. We cannot win wars if we can't be honest to ourselves about the threat.

The world needs to know the name of Hossam Armanious.

The Bloody March of Islam

2005-01-16T16:09:00.000-07:00

A Moslem thought process in action:

1) Egyptian-born Coptic Christian expresses his disdain for Islam online.
2) Slaughter man and his family.

While, obviously, nothing is yet confirmed, all signs point to the savage murder of the Armanious family as yet another in a growing list of Islamist atrocities.

Just a few signs that this isn't an ordinary quadruple homicide:

1) Robbers don't slit everyone's throat and savagely beat their victims.
2) The method in which this entire family of four was butchered just happens to match the method prescribed by the Koran for slaying infidels.
3) For some reason (just some reason) the eldest daughter was repeatedly stabbed in the wrist where she happened (just happened) to have a tattoo of a cross.

On Iraq: Calm Down

2005-01-15T23:11:00.000-07:00

If Iraq is, as Ted Kennedy managed to bellow this week, "George Bush's Vietnam", then I have a simple response, "there's light at the end of the tunnel."

One of the biggest problems of modern war is the twenty-four hour news cycle. The media has a lot of time and space to fill and, resultantly, they manage to blow everything out of proportion and distort everyone's view of events. The panic over Iraq isn't reflective of how things are going on the ground over there; it's a reflection of how things are going on the air over here.

People are often panicked and convinced that events are spinning out of control without rational reason to believe so. Of course things are hard in Iraq. But things are hard in every conflict and post-conflict situation. Can you imagine if the modern media had been around in the terrible mass wars of the last two centuries? Can you imagine what Crossfire would have been like after a Battle, as was routine in the Civil War, where ten thousand people died?

Things went wrong in Iraq, yes. But that's the way of war. The only people who, before the war, promised that everything in Iraq would go perfectly were either lying for political reasons or stupid. Things haven't gone perfectly, no. But things have gone as well as can be expected.

There's a clear exit strategy underway for Iraq. At the end of this month the elections are going to be held. All signs are that they're going to go well or, at least, well enough for our purposes. After the elections are over, the number of US forces will begin to be reduced and more and more security duties will be turned over to Iraqi forces.

A major US force (if I were to guess, I'd say a force of about the same size as that stationed in Korea over the last decade or, in other words, a full Division plus supporting elements and facilities for the rapid deployment of additional units) will remain in Iraq for the long haul. If I were a betting man, I'd guess that some American soldiers will be stationed in Iraq for decades. But these forces won't conduct day-to-day policing operations. Instead, they'll remain in their bases and stand at the ready to strike terrorist bases or, in the last ditch, defend the Iraqi government from overthrow.

I, for one, don't expect the Iraqi government to be overturned by the terrorists. No one should. If you read beneath the hysteria in the media the overriding theme of recent months is the impotence of the so-called "resistance" as a resistance movement. There's no sign of any sort of revolution, nor do the "insurgents" appear to command any forces capable of mounting any sort of major rebellion. They're able to kill, but not to fight.

Now, they're going to go on killing for quite sometime. I'm well aware of that. They'll attempt attacks on American forces in their bases but, for the most part, US forces will prove to be secure. They'll continue to attack Iraqi security forces, but even that can't go on forever.

Iraq is a clear-cut victory for the United States. It was harder than expected, but I see no reason not to now be optimistic about the future of the country. Some are predicting a 'civil war', but they've been doing that for two years. If there were to be one, it wouldn't be much of one. The Shiites and the Kurds have no real interest in fighting, so it would be a Sunni-Shiite conflict. The Shiites are better organized than the Sunnis, plus they massively outnumber them.

I expect to see the first signs of the implementation of a US exit strategy within months of the elections (assuming that things aren't, as they tend to be, derailed by events). As part of this strategy, I suspect that we'll see some sort of strike against Syria in retaliation for Syrian support for the insurgency.

I view such a strike as integral to the transition into the new phase of operations in Iraq. By striking Syria, the United States would demonstrate its willingness to use force in defense of Iraq and, additionally, demonstrate the continuing vitality of American military power.

As a side note: I'm constantly amazed by people's efforts to stick Donald Rumsfeld with what did go wrong in Iraq. To put it simply: the problems of the insurgency and everything that's resulted it are as far from being the fault of Don Rumsfeld and the Department of Defense as it humanly possible.

The Secretary had an exit strategy from the beginning. March in. Change regime. March out. Basically, if he'd had his way, he'd have appointed an interim government and then sent them out on their own, with US forces remaining on hand to respond to any mess. If the result was to be a civil war then, well, "freedom is messy." No one (other than a few foreign policy professionals) in America would have cared. With careful US support, the chosen faction would have emerged from the resultant chaos as the winner.

That's the reason why there was no Rumsfeld "exit strategy." That's the reason he didn't send more troops. He didn't expect to stay.

What happened next is the fault of the Paul Bremer, the State Department, and the President. Basically, having given the hawkish faction their way in invading Iraq, President Bush yielded to those (mostly at State, in the CIA and elsewhere) who sought to repeat the MacArthur regency in Iraq, with Bremer playing the role of General MacArthur.

That was a bad idea, if an understandable one. We forget now but, after all of the predictions of disaster before the war, there was an initial post-war boost of jubilation. Somewhere along the way, the mission in Iraq was transformed from regime change to nation building. There was a subtle process of mission creep.

It began with the looting. People afterwards complained that US troops didn't stop the post-overthrow looting. I suspect that was intentional. My suspicion is that Rummy resisted ordering US troops to do so because he didn't want American soldiers assigned to police Baghdad's streets.

There were two ways of doing Iraq quickly and successfully. The first, the Rumsfeld way, would have been a quick in-and-out which would have served most American interested, admittedly at the expense of Iraqi lives and standards of living. The second, the British model, would have been a full-on clamp down, followed by an extended period of American rule.

Bremer and State, with the desire to play the swaggering imperialist but not the ability, tried some sort of awful hybrid-approach which sucked the US into Iraq's internal problems without offering an obvious way out. They wanted the fun of playing imperial proconsul, but they didn't want to accept the unpleasant duties which all good British colonial administrators had to perform. The result was chaos.

But, in the end, that's simply the reality of war. It was a bad idea to go for a full-on occupation and a worse idea not to use the force necessary to enforce it. People always talk about troop numbers. That's pure nonsense. The problem was never troops numbers, but the force used by the troops. Britain ruled India with tens of thousands of soldiers and a few thousand administrators. They did it through their political savvy and their willingness to use frank and brutal force where called for. In 1920-21 a much smaller British force in Iraq faced what the United States never did: a united national uprising, and they managed to put it down fairly quickly.

I don't mean to condemn them for their mistakes: in war everyone makes errors. I simply point them out by way of explanation for what went wrong. But, even with that, things hardly turned out as badly as they've been portrayed.

To begin: virtually none of the predictions of the anti-war left came true. The left loves to talk about weapons of mass destruction. Fine, let them. But I'd simply point out that virtually none of what they worried about came to pass. There was no massive environmental disaster. The war didn't result in massive unrest in the Moslem world and the overthrow of 'moderate' Islamic governments. There was no humanitarian disaster in Iraq. Baghdad didn't turn into the new Stalingrad.

The only pre-war anti-war argument which continues to be mentioned is the idea that a war in Iraq would be a 'distraction' from the Global War on Terrorism. I don't believe that to be true at all. It's only true in the sense that some falsely wish to portray the "War on Terrorism" as "the War to Capture Osama Bin Laden." While we don't have access to al-Qaeda's books, I'd bet good money that the majority of their resources and operatives are going into the battle in Iraq. More than that, I'd point out that, had there been no war, the obviously deadly and capable Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would be running free under the charge of Saddam Hussein.

I'd rather have followed up the invasion of Iraq by hitting Syria and Iran but, all in all, it can hardly be said that the time and effort devoted to fighting the insurgency in Iraq has been wasted.

In the end, my advice for the public on Iraq is simple and direct: calm down. Wait and see what happens. Nothing is as bad as you believe.

Queering Lincoln

2005-01-12T21:49:00.000-07:00

One of the hobbies of the academic left (but I repeat myself) is known as 'Queering.' In basic terms, this means taking something and looking at it through a gay lens. The result of this, a frantic effort to discover hidden validation of the modern homosexual lifestyle in the past, is typically long and pretentious papers claiming that Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were gay lovers or that The Birth of a Nation was really about the D.W. Griffith's sublimated homosexual urges and the struggle for queer liberation. Now they've come for Lincoln.

The basic 'Queering' process goes something like this. You pick through something in a desperate search for something, anything, which might be interpreted as evidence of homosexuality. You then latch onto this point with the dogged tenacity of a rabid alligator and reject any further scrutiny into this point. You reject the notion that any other evidence might be exculpatory. Shortly after you first make your assertions, you then reject any attempt to refute your claims as being the obvious product of 'homophobia.'

Let's consider for a moment what we know of the 'evidence' being presented in C. A. Tripp's book The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. As summed up, the evidence is something like this:

1) Lincoln entered puberty earlier (that this even makes the cut is simply a sign of the degree to which Tripp's work is tainted by his association with Kinsey's crack 'science') that most other boys. Maybe. Possibly. If we take a few lines written decades later as 'evidence.' One might as well attempt to gain clues into his nature by examining his skull.

2) Lincoln had a handful of close relationships with men. To this, I ask, so what? Especially in that day men tended to have closer (or, at least, outwardly closer) friendships than they often do today. There's no evidence as to whether any of these relationships were of a sexual nature other than Tripp's own wild conjecture.

3) Lincoln's marriage was unhappy. Again: so what? The fact that he had an unhappy marriage hardly makes him gay.

The most damning evidence that Tripp manages to produce is a quote from a friend of Lincoln's discussing his "perfect thighs." This quote, naturally, has managed to find its way into every story discussing Tripp's book. But what sort of evidence is it?

First, I can't find much evidence at all that the quote has been widely circulated until now. A quick search of various search engines can't find any example of the quote which doesn't mention Tripp. A further review by myself found only a single book, from 1999, which references it (and which lets it pass without comment). Without further study, we have no real further insight into this supposedly damning evidence.

Yet, possibilities abound. It's possible that the individual who offered up this phrase, as opposed to Lincoln, was indeed 'gay' himself and so, therefore, he took particular notice of these things. It's equally possible that it was just a strange thought which popped into his head. It's also possible that it was originally offered up with malicious intent. After all, Honest Abe has never been universally loved.

People have asked me if this matters. Verily, it does. This is a clear effort to assault and forcibly abscond with the memory of an American icon.

Gay activists don't care about the facts here. That's the whole point of the 'queering' process. They're picking through Lincoln's life to pick out those little things that, if they grasp, they can use to assert homosexuality on Lincoln's part.

They're counting on two things.

First, the willingness of the public to simply accept something if it's presented to them as 'evidence.' People believe all sorts of false things simply because some book, some television show, or some teacher told them. Spread this in the classroom for a decade or two and it will be pretty much universally accepted.

Second, they're counting on their ability to shout down anyone who opposes them. Anyone who objects to this will be painted as a "homophobe" who is "unwilling to accept the truth" about Lincoln.

Then, once this process is completed, they will use this as a weapon to break down all opposition to their agenda. You think this doesn't matter? It does.

How could it not matter if the man universally viewed as the father of the Republican Party was gay?

How could it not matter if the man generally viewed as America's greatest President and greatest national hero was gay?

That's why they've chosen Lincoln. Because they know that making him gay will prove to be a first-rate weapon against their opponents. "Lincoln would have supported gay marriage," they'll say. "Lincoln saved the Union, but gays can't adopt babies?" they'll ask incredulously. They seek to imbue themselves with Lincoln's greatness. They seek to take from Lincoln and claim for themselves.

Now we need to fight this slander. We cannot adopt to this an attitude of, "well, we'll wait to see what the evidence says." We have to set out actively to discredit this nonsense.

Now is the time for all good men to rally to the defense of Father Abraham. He saved the Union and now we must save him from the intrigues of a cabal desperate to lay claim to his name to serve their ends. We must stand up to and respond to this horrific lie, wherever and however it is spread.

Heading to 2008: The Republicans

2005-01-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

To begin, I expect that the 2008 primaries are either going to be the wildest in living memory, or they're going to be dead silent. I doubt if they're going to fall anywhere in between.

On the Democratic side, it's entirely possible for Hillary Clinton to have the nomination essentially wrapped up before the end of 2006, if everything breaks perfectly for her and if she doesn't face a serious fight for her Senate seat. That is, of course, a big if. If the national and New York GOP are smart (and they can't get Rudy to jump into the race) they'll literally go begging to find a decent candidate to take her on. If Hillary is forced to spend all of 2005 and 2006 preparing for and fighting a tough Senate race, it'll let other possible Democratic candidates get a jump on her.

On the Republican side I see only two potential figures that might be able to spare the Republican Party a divisive primary battle: Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Both have disclaimed interest in the race but, in politics, that doesn't mean all that much.

I'm not at all sure that Dick Cheney's health issues are insurmountable. If, come 2008, he seems healthy and his doctors are able to give him a clean bill of health, it doesn't seem at all implausible that a "Draft Cheney" movement might emerge. And, of course, there's always the possibility of the unthinkable, especially in this day and age. It's far too soon to write off Dick Cheney in '08.

Jeb Bush is, of course, ostensibly not interested in running for President because of the "dynasty" issue. But, let's face it, if the other candidate is going to be the former President's wife, the Democrats are going to have a hard time screaming, "We can't be have the President's brother running." I'd look for him to be called upon to run if Hillary manages to build up both momentum and a huge war chest early on. Again, it would probably be run through a carefully orchestrated "Draft Jeb" movement.

Additionally, the spectre of the Terminator hangs over the race. If Schwarzenegger continues to be a popular Governor, if he's re-elected, and if the Constitution can be amended in time (the really big if), he'd be a difficult-to-beat contender. Very difficult.

But, failing the emergence of an early nominee, both parties are likely to face major ideological battles between liberal, conservative, and 'continuation' factions. Most notably, while I expect Senator Chuck Hagel (I don't expect McCain to run, for reasons I'll get to in a bit) to get major support from the media, I expect that the real energy in the Republican race will be injected from the right.

If I were going to guess, the Republican primaries in 2008 may well end up looking a great deal like the Democratic ones in 2004. We'll have a slew of major establishment players running simply because it's "their time to run." One of them (early guess: Bill Frist) will emerge as a shallow front-runner, holding 20% in the polls versus 10% or so for other candidates. The race will be thrown into disarray when a candidate who connects to the Republican Party's conservative base catches on fire. I've also got a suggestion as to who that candidate may be: former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.

Think about it for a moment. It appears to be increasingly likely that Moore, famous for his staunch defense of the Ten Commandments, will run in the primary against unpopular Republican Governor Bob Riley. If he wins the primary (which is also likely), Moore will be the next Governor of Alabama.

Now imagine for a moment we're in January of 2007. Moore, upon being elected, immediately places an even-larger 10 Commandments monument on state property. In response, he's slapped down by some Federal Court. Moore responds by declaring war against the secularization of the United States, declaring his candidacy for President.

Stranger things have happened.

Two names which I think will be quietly dropped from consideration over the next two years: John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Both would clearly like the job, to be sure. But they're both up against certain realities.

For John McCain, I think his age and his health problems are insurmountable. It's one thing to be a healthy and vigorous seventy-something. It's another thing to be a sick seventy-something. I don't think that anyone can look at pictures of John McCain from this year and pictures of him from five years ago and not conclude that his health has taken a turn for the worse. McCain is a good man, but I don't think that he's up for the job. And I'm sure, come election season, his opponents will say far worse. I expect him to back Chuck Hagel for President instead.

Rudy Giuliani is trapped by the social conservatives. It's one thing to be a "moderate" on issues like gay marriage, gun control, and abortion like more than a few major Republicans are. It's another thing altogether to be four-square on the liberal side of those issues. The only way for Giuliani to have even a slim hope of winning the nomination is to start shifting on those issues right now. He can't fully flip, but he can stake out the most popular ground nationally (against gay marriage/for civil unions, pro-choice-but-for-all-possible-restrictions, etc.) and hope that the support from some prominent social conservatives (who I'm sure he'll be able to buy) and his status as a hero of 9-11 will carry him through. I think that he'll ultimately decide against the race and run for Governor of New York in 2006, hoping for a Republican loss in 2008 which will force the party to move towards the "center."

In the end, I don't expect the Republicans to turn either far to the left or far to the right. The odds are (and I realize this is a bold prediction) that the candidate will be a Governor from within the Republican mainstream.

However, there's one way to make such an election bold: make the Republican nominee Minnesota Governor Pawlenty, Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts or Governor Bob Ehrlich of Maryland. All three easily fit within the realms of conventional Republican conservatism and, more importantly, hail from blue states. Nothing would better screw with the minds of the Democratic Party than to have the Mormon conservative Governor of Massachusetts as the Republican candidate for President. Heh.

Newt Gingrich has been making noises about running too, of course, but I don't expect that to amount to all that much. Even the idea of a blue-state Republican probably won't go anywhere.

Bill Frist and George Allen strike me as the most likely candidates at this point. I'd almost give an edge to Allen simply because Frist's cat-killing past creeps even me out. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to say that the idea of a young Dr. Frist slicing up stray cats for practice (as necessary as it might have been to becoming a world-class surgeon) isn't going to play well.

There are others, of course. But I'm not writing a book.

The Torture Fight

2005-01-05T20:34:00.000-07:00

Can someone seriously answer this question: why do we care if terrorists are tortured? The Democrats clearly intend to make it a big deal in the hearings for Alberto Gonzalez's confirmation as Attorney General, so we need to talk about it. I'll grant you that, by most appearances, what could be reasonably called "torture" has taken place. Basically, it appears to have taken a few forms:

1) Rendition of prisoners to nations which actually do use forcible information extraction.
2) "Soft torture" techniques like sleep deprivation and so forth.
3) Rogue incidents involving inexperienced or untrained personnel (IE Abu Ghraib).

I'll grant all of that. And then I'll ask you: who gives a fuck? I certainly don't. My only questions are:

1) Why are we outsourcing our torture, thus depriving hard-working American pain technicians of much needed work?
2) Who gives a fuck about terrorists?

People are such babies nowadays. A hundred years ago people caught fighting out of uniform in the fashion that the terrorists do would have been executed virtually on the spot. The left is always prattling on about how the Earth's resources are limited. You'd think they'd see the summary execution of captured terrorists as a good way of preserving our natural resources.

I suppose the preservation of the lives of those who try to murder Americans comes before Mother Gaia for the enviro-left. Even they have their priorities.

This is all about scoring political points by triggering in the American people the gag reflex that all Democrats are taught to overcome during initial reorientation. They want to trigger a visceral reaction. "Abuse=Bad." Well, to that I simply respond: who the fuck cares about terrorists?

It's this sort of petty bullshit which has kept the pathetic and murderous Iraqi "resistance" in the fight far longer than they should be. They're running around hacking off people's heads while shrieking "God is great" and then putting the videos on the internet. Then they go home and read about how Americans are having a national hair-pulling slap-fight over who's responsible for some clueless terrorist cannon-fodder getting a pair of panties put on his head.

No wonder they think that they can win. No wonder they think that we're weak. The American left (and a good chunk of the upright-right) doesn't understand the great fundamental truth about the Middle East: it's a place which respects strength above all other things.

One reason that the initial aftermath of the Iraq War went so well diplomatically was that America, in Moslem eyes, came to look like a "Strong Horse." And, as Bin Laden himself reminded us, that's the one thing that the Islamic world respects. They understand strength and they don't think that we have it.

In 1920-21 the British faced a full-on national revolt in Iraq. A revolt which saw Shiite and Sunni united. They put it down in less than a year. They did it with deadly force (and poison gas), but they did it. And the Arabs knew that they were facing people with the will to win, so they sat down and cooperated.

The funny thing is that the Iraqi resistance is militarily defeated and has been for some time. The original Ba'athist remnant Sunni resistance was dead by the end of 2003. The abortive Shiite uprising was crushed in the Spring-Summer of 2004. The last, best hope of the foreign forces was crushed at Fallujah in November of last year. The terrorists in Iraq are incapable of any sort of meaningful operations. Militarily, they're done.

Careful US diplomacy and military operations forestalled a possible national uprising. As the national government of Iraq takes control such a think will become even less likely. All the terrorists are capable of doing now is killing at random.

What we have running around Iraq at this point isn't an organized resistance capable of full-on battle. It's a rabble of people who are behaving like serial killers.

This is an important point because serial killers are hard to stop. Think back to the DC Sniper case. How long did it take to catch just two men operating in a relatively small area while surrounded by law enforcement?

If all you want to do is shoot someone or leave a bomb by the side of the road, it's not that easy to catch you. It's hard to stop a relative handful of determined individuals from killing.

The weakness of the Iraqi resistance is fully demonstrated by the nature of the attacks they undertake. Virtually every attack these days is an improvised explosive device, a car bomb, a mortar attack, or something like that. All things that don't require a lot of men. All things that can be done easily, quickly, and repeatedly.

Think about this for a second: in 1994 the IRA managed to launch three mortar attacks against Heathrow Airport, right in the heart of London. They did it on nearly consecutive nights: and they got away.

I bring all of this up to emphasize the silliness of arguing about a few "abused" detainees. In all probability, stronger measures are the only way to bring the present problem to heel.

We're not dealing with a romantic/patriotic "resistance" movement. We're dealing with sadistic foreign killers. We should be able to treat them as such.

The Congress shouldn't be hounding Gonzalez about a few "abused" terrorists. They should be asking him why there are so few.

What to do with Russia?

2005-01-01T21:34:00.000-07:00

Amazingly, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, Russia appears to be becoming a proud and strong nation once again. I'm on the record as being both an admirer of what Putin has achieved in Russia and nervous about what the future holds for him and his country. The question we must now ask and answer with increasing urgency is this: what do we want to do about Russia?

We have two broad options: cooperation or confrontation. In this case, I'm for the former.

Confrontation is a bad idea. Now that Soviet Communism is dead, what reason have we to stand in the way of Russia's restoration to the status of a great power? Certainly, even if Russia were to again become an imperialist power, they'd have little interest in confrontation with the United States. They'd be far more likely to either end up fighting the Chinese or shadow-boxing with the Europeans and, quite frankly, after the nonsense that the Germans and the French have given us in recent years, I don't really have any particular objection to the theoretical Russian conquest and subjugation of France and Germany.

Niall Ferguson warned recently that Putin is a Russian version of Franco or Pinochet. He means this as a bad thing. I don't see it. When the time came about, both Franco and Pinochet proved to be men that we could do business with. I think that the same is true of Putin.

Look, Russia is a very difficult country to govern. I'm not entirely convinced that it's possible to govern a nation as unwieldy as Russia by any means other than despotism. Ferguson warns that Putin's dictatorship might endanger Western interests. To that I ask: more than the alternative?

So far as I can tell the most likely alternative to the mildly authoritarian rule of Putin ("managed democracy" being my descriptive phrase of choice) is the eventual break-up of Russia itself. Instead of a canny-but-sane authoritarian leader, we'll end up with a half dozen new Moslem states scattered across central Asia, a Siberia effectively under Chinese control and a western Russian rump state forced, de facto, into the European sphere of influence. I hardly see how that suits our interests.

With a few exceptions, we and the Russians now do have common interests. In the long-term, we have the same two principal enemies: Islam and China. We have a few clashes (most notably Russia's ambitions to restore the western portion of its former empire) but, quite frankly, I don't think that any of those things are worth losing Russia's potential over. It makes little sense to me that we ought to worry about the feelings of specks on the European map when we have the chance to make a real deal which might ultimately bring about the defeat of our two worst foes.

To begin we have to agree that Russia should not be allowed to regain control over any of its former territory in Europe. As a fallback, we should accept that it may be that some majority-Russian areas ought to be allowed to join Russia if that is the wish of the local population. In particular, if Eastern Ukraine wishes to be a part of Russia, I see little reason why the West ought to stand in the way.

We need to think of this in terms of great power politics and not in terms of human rights. If the price of winning the Global War on Terrorism is ceding a big chunk of Central Asia to the Russians or signing away the lives of a bunch of violent Moslem separatists, I think that's a price that we ought to pay.

The time to deal with Russia is now and not when we face an imminent crisis. We need to offer the Russians a "grand bargain" to secure their long-term cooperation.

To being, we need to offer the Russians a completely free hand in Chechnya and against Moslem threats elsewhere. We don't have to support them, but we do need to absolutely shut up about whatever they do in those places.

Second, we should hand Russia the keys to Central Asia. If the Russians really want to rule a bunch of backwards Third World cesspools that are chock-full of Moslems fundamentalists, I don't see who we are to stand in their way.

In exchange for these things, we must demand an end to Russia's further designs on the parts of Europe that we care about and full Russian support for the Global War on Terrorism as well as their membership in an anti-Chinese alliance.

If one thinks about it further, this concept might well be expanded to include India as well. India has no love of China, nor do the people who rule India have any great love of Moslems (despite the fact that they rule over so many of them). It's well worth remembering that General Musharraf won't live forever and that something will eventually have to done about Pakistan. As with Russia and Central Asia, if India wants to settle the problem of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal in a five minute period one afternoon, I don't see what particular objection we should have to it.

We're living in a new world and we're going to have to make some compromises to do it.

What of Russia?

2005-01-01T20:15:00.000-07:00

Niall Ferguson on Putin's Russia in the Telegraph.

The Failure to Use 9-11

2004-12-29T22:04:00.000-07:00

The greatest mistake made by the Bush Administration was the failure to fully utilize the political opportunity offered up by September 11th. I suppose that it's hard to blame them, given the chaos of those days, but I still believe it to have been a serious mistake. Simply put, I tend to view politics as a locked wheel. Most of the time there's not much give to spin the wheel either one way or another. Yet, from time to time, there are Earth-shattering events which give one a quick chance to radically spin the wheel. Once the chance passes, the wheel freezes again in its new position, with only minor movement possible.

As I see it, there were several lost chances after 9-11 to lay the groundwork for a broad and lengthy conflict (though, I hasten to add, one which might well be mostly over by now). The first came on 9-11 itself.

Like many, I hated the President's initial speech. It was too focused on healing and not focused enough on vengeance. It failed to meet the scale of the challenge.

Lately, I've been testing an experiment which I like to call, "re-branding the Global War on Terrorism." In the course of a day, I encounter far more people whose minds have been poisoned by the likes of Michael Moore than I'd care to meet in a lifetime. The problem, as I see it, is that the causes and reasons for the present war are too complicated for them. The majority of the population, not being particularly sophisticated politically, tend to be eager to accept the simplest explanation available to them. Since most explanations of the rationale for the present war tend to become complex fairly quickly, they tend to zone out. And they tend to fall for the easy answers offered by the likes of Michael Moore. ("War for oil", etc.)

Take one of those people and explain it to them differently. Instead of focusing on terror, democracy and the rest, focus on the plans of Islam. Explain, in essence, that Islam is evil and wants to conquer the world and, therefore, most be resisted. Explain it that way and, more often than not, I've found that people will "get it" and be willing to accept this answer. It won't work on hard-core lefties, of course, but it'll work on most average people. It instinctively makes sense to them in a way that other explanations don't.

It seems to me that the best possible course of action would have been for President Bush, on 9-11 itself, to have worked the words "Third World War" and "World War Three" into his speech. The media, being the media, would have found these words irresistible.

The headlines the next day would have looked something like this:
New York Times: "Following Attacks, Bush Declares Beginning of ‘Third World War'"
New York Post: "WORLD WAR III"

And, of course, the TV networks wouldn't have been able to resist creating wondrous "Third World War" banners for their twenty-four hour coverage. By the very fact of his speaking the words, it would have been made so.

To accompany that declaration, the President should have then gone on to take several other steps. First: the whole of the National Guard and the reserves should have been called to active duty, regardless of the actual military need for their services. Second, "war bonds" should be have (as was discussed) been issued, regardless of their actual utility.

A major part of waging a modern war is marketing and selling it. One of the biggest problems we've faced in the years since 9-11 is that people who are unable or unwilling to pay sufficient attention are simply incapable of grasping the nature of the threat.

The other missed chance to show the reality of the danger was at Tora Bora, when Bin Laden and his minions made their way into the mountain complex. Now, I'm not foolishly saying that we should have dumped US troops into there, as John Kerry did. Had that been done, the odds are that there'd have been a thousand US dead in that single battle and there'd still be no certainty of getting Bin Laden.

No, what I think should have happened is much simpler: US and Afghan troops should have backed up and the place should have been plastered with nuclear bombs. A dozen or so nukes would have sealed those caves for the rest of time, destroying much of al-Qaeda.

The best effect of such a move, of course, would have been its demonstration of US resolve. No one, especially in December of 2001, (well, no one who counts) would have had the will or ability to actively oppose such a decision.

Alas, chances come and then they are lost. But the President would be well-advised to be prepared to seize his chance if the terrorists strike again.

Fall of Canada Round-Up

2004-12-29T21:16:00.000-07:00

This, from the Vancouver Sun, is just priceless:

Corren, an elementary school teacher in Coquitlam, has been fighting for recognition of homosexual issues in the curriculum for nearly nine years. He and his partner were married in July and legally changed their last names just prior to the wedding. Before the couple was married, they were known as Murray Warren and Peter Cook.

Heh.

The article itself is less amusing, being about their attempts to forcibly inject pro-gay content into the school system, most notably history. As I said a few weeks ago, I'm fairly sure that, in a decade or so, students are going to be asked to write serious essays about the gay love affair between Jesus and Judas.

And, in even more alarming news, apparently Canada is filled to the brim with Chinese spies. This, of course, is a danger that I've warned of for some time, but it's nice my essential rightness confirmed once again.

Good News

2004-12-29T01:51:00.000-07:00

Susan Sontag is dead.

A Vicious, Wicked Faith

2004-12-28T04:37:00.000-07:00

Americans who are fearful that they will soon lose some of their freedoms should look no farther than Canada and Britain to see the shape of things to come. �Freedom�, for the left, appears to have become something that ends at the bathhouse door (that is, if you�re not a member of a Designated Victim Group�). At the same time radical judges are courageously imposing the social mores of a French brothel upon the rest of the West, lawmakers and judges both are undermining other, more fundamental, freedoms.

Let us consider the case of Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party. He was recently arrested for calling Islam a, �vicious, wicked faith.� Now, I�ll stipulate to the fact that Nick Griffin, by most accounts, appears to be an unsavoury character. I�ll further grant you that the British National Party is a hideous collection of low-life racists. But, I assert, even low-life racists ought to retain their freedom of speech. Especially when all Mr. Griffin said was something that millions of people without a hint of racial prejudice in their personal make up believe.

Scratch that: even if Mr. Griffin were to be caught on video screaming racist obscenities while dressed up in blackface, he should not be arrested. People should not be judicially punished simply for the things that they believe.

Now, some may say: how do you reconcile this with your calls for people who support or sympathize with terrorists to be punished? That, at least, is an easy matter.

I don�t believe that it�s a crime, punishable by law, to be pro-terrorist. I believe that it�s an act of war concert with our enemies. We�ve broken down the distinction between crimes and wars. Crimes need to be punished judicially. Acts of war need to be punished martially. I think we need to bear in mind a clear distinction between the two.

I don�t think that anyone should go to jail for being a member of al-Qaeda. I think that, in keeping with a proud tradition, anyone found to be a member or supporter of al-Qaeda anywhere in the world, including within the United States, ought to be treated as all combatants found out of uniform have traditionally been treated under the laws of war. In other words, anyone who is a member of al-Qaeda or takes any action to support them should be tried by a military commission and then summarily executed.

But, I�ve been diverted. The point I was getting at was that there are different standards for those advocating a domestic political position and those working for the enemies of one�s country. The freedoms of the former need to be protected. The freedoms of the latter need to be ended with rope.

We seem to have this backwards. Far too many in Western societies seem to be interested in protecting our enemies and punishing domestic political expression.

It only gets worse: in Britain, the Labour Government is preparing a law against �religious hatred� which would, in all probability, make even less statements of opposition to Islam a crime. One of the individuals working on the new law has gone so far as to say that it would, �make it illegal to say that Muslims are a threat to Britain.�

Well, let me say two things right now. First: I agree with Mr. Griffin that Islam is a, �wicked, vicious faith.� There can be, and are, good Moslems but that does not change the obvious and fundamental fact that Islam itself is, in general, a bad thing and that we�d all be better off had it never been created. Second: I agree that Moslems are a threat to Britain, to Canada, to America and to free people everywhere.

We have some evidence that Islam is compatible with democracy, but we have very little evidence that it�s compatible with pluralism. That, if we�re courageous enough to face the truth, is the real reason for the persecution of people like Mr. Griffin and for the whole concept of �religious hatred� laws.

If you make a play falsely slandering Jesus as a homosexual, you�ll be lauded for your courage and face, at the most, a few threatening letters.

If someone actually let you produce a play accurately depicting Mohammed as a pedophile (see: Aisha), the odds are fairly high that both you and your family will be murdered.

That is why, if everything goes according to plan, it will soon be a crime in Britain (and elsewhere!) to defame the character of Mohammed. The authorities have looked at their options, and decided that they�d rather not deal with future religious riots of the sort that we saw in Nigeria over the Miss World Pageant.

One reason I plan to emigrate at the earliest opportunity is that I have what I believe to be a well-founded fear that Canada is, at the most, a half-decade away from the point where political expression on the issues of Islam and other matters will be fully criminalized. Frankly, given the size of my mouth, I�ve very little doubt that, if I stay, someone will try and come at me for something.

Already, as a result of various e-mails I�ve received threatening me with attempts to press criminal �hate speech� charges against me (my favourite being one announcing that anyone expressing support for President Bush could be prosecuted under Canadian anti-genocide laws) that I�ve prepared plans to, if necessary, flee a political prosecution and seek asylum in the United States.

That sounds crazy, I know. But I�m not at all sure if it sounds as crazy as it once did. A few years ago, a man in Saskatoon was successfully prosecuted by a �human rights tribunal� for taking out an ad in a newspaper quoting certain Bible versus that denounce homosexuality. Under a new criminal law passed last year, it seems entirely possible that someone could end up in jail for doing the same thing today.

Defenders of that law claim that it contains a protection for religious expression. We�ll see. So did the law under which he was prosecuted a few years ago. The tribunal got around the exemption by claiming that any speech that is �hateful� cannot be considered to have been made in �good faith�, an interpretation of the law which essentially nullified the exception.

In defense of our freedoms, we must stand up for the repugnant. For, if we do not defend those who we can agree, by mutual consent, to be �bad� it won�t be long before the state starts to come for all the lesser shades of �bad.�

The Democratic Coup in the State of Washington

2004-12-24T01:50:00.000-07:00

“Why is it always the Democrats who steal elections?” a friend asked me recently, “isn’t it that you’re just a Republican and you want to blame everything on Democrats?” While that is, of course, mostly true it does not alter the fixed fact that Democrats commit electoral fraud with far greater frequency than Republicans do. This is not (entirely) due to the well-known moral turpitude of the followers of the party of idleness, dishonesty, and treason, rather it is mostly a product of a geographic situation which results in Democrats universally possessing the two elements necessary to commit a crime: motive and opportunity.

In a broad sense, Democrats steal elections simply because they feel like it. More specifically, I suspect, Democrats rationalize it to themselves through logic that was on full public display during the most recent Presidential election. Essentially, Democrats believe that they are the natural party of government and, if they do not win, that means that they’ve been victims of fraud or deception or that their voters have somehow been “disenfranchised.” This is the driving force behind the increasingly wild conspiracy-theorizing over matters in the State of Ohio. Democrats can’t accept that they lost because they don’t believe that it’s possible for them to lose. They tend to view their failure to win as ipso facto proof of fraud or malfeasance.

This is, of course, a humorous thing since it’s well-known that Democrats are far more likely to engage in electoral fraud than Republicans. As I’ve already shown, they’ve got motive a-plenty for fraud (not to say that Republicans don’t as well), the difference is this: the Democrats have opportunity as well.

The places where it’s easiest to commit electoral fraud are, obviously, those with the most voters. In other words: inner city precincts. Those places, as it so happens, fall under almost-total control by the Democratic Party. It’s hard to create thousands of new ballots in a rural county with two thousand people. It’s easy to do it in Seattle, Detroit, or Columbus.

Combine motive, opportunity and immorality and, more often than not, you’ve got a crime. And so we have.

What we’ve got in progress today in the State of Washington is nothing less than a non-violent coup d’etat. The will of Washington voters is being overturned through fraud and the complicity of a media which is, as always, willing to cover up the wanton criminality of the Democratic Party. What’s going on in Washington is the same thing which the Democrats try in every election: the perpetuation of a great crime against the people.

Simply put, at this point, any election result which puts State Attorney General Christine Gregoire in the office of Governor is, on its face, invalid. There’s simply been too much malfeasance for any such result to be accepted. Frankly, at this point the actual ballots in Washington State have been so heavily contaminated that I don’t think anyone can trust the results.

The stories of what’s gone on are legion. And, of course, almost all of them involve King County: a locality controlled by a classic, old-time Democratic machine. Ranging from the initial discovery of 10,000 “misplaced” ballots, to the “enhancement” of ballots that the machines wouldn’t read, to, finally, the sudden “discovery” of another 750 “lost” ballots, the whole thing has been closer to what you’d expect out of South Texas in 1948 than Washington State in 2004.

Frankly, when all’s said and done, I won’t be at all shocked if we discover that those final absentee voters all managed to vote in alphabetical order.

Now, I realize that among the final batch of “disenfranchised” absentee voters in King County was a King County Councilman. This, on its face, would seem to be strong evidence that those voters were actually excluded from the original count as a result of worker error. Very strong evidence. In my opinion, suspiciously strong evidence.

Frankly, I wouldn’t be at all shocked if someone simply manufactured those additional ballots and make sure to put a prominent politician’s name of the list of supposedly disqualified voters in order to create the appearance of the vote’s propriety. It wouldn’t be hard at all. Get a list of people who voted absentee and pick off seven hundred plus people at random and add their names to the lists while manufacturing a second ballot for each of them.

I’m not claiming that is what happened: I’m just saying that it could have happened. I really don’t know. A month and a half is an awfully long time for ballots to be sitting around.

Further recounts won’t do any good: the pool of ballots has already been contaminated. Trying to separate the dirty Democrat ballots from the rest would bear remarkable similarity to attempting urine from a swimming pool.

In Defense of Rumsfeld

2004-12-23T01:19:00.000-07:00

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has made mistakes, just as anyone who has ever done anything has made mistakes. That isn�t the questions. The question before us is this: what did Donald Rumsfeld ever do to create the current firestorm? The answer, insofar as I can tell, is this: pretty much nothing.

Forgetting the present mini-controversies about up-armouring Humvees and the use of the autopen to sign condolence letters, what are the charges against Rumsfeld? There appear to be two major lines of attack against the Secretary, one from the right and one from the left.

The first, ostensibly from the right (but often echoed from the left) is that he should be held at fault for the fact that there are �too few� troops in Iraq. This is an often-repeated but little thought upon notion.

Think about it for a moment: what would �more troops� do, were they to actually be deployed to Iraq, except serve as additional targets for the insurgents? Really think about it. What would these additional troops be doing? The answer seems to be �patrol.� Patrol what? The streets? The roads?

More troops would be called for if we were fighting a conventional army. But we�re not: we�re actually fighting no more than a handful of insurgents who kill, in essence, with purposeful randomness. �More troops� might be called for if US forces were engaging another army and being defeated. But they aren�t. The overwhelming majority of US casualties are the result of acts of terrorism being carried out by a relatively small band of people.

Think back to October of 2002 when the DC Snipers were wandering around. They managed to kill ten people in twenty-three days before they were caught, almost entirely by accident. That was two people, with one rifle and beat-up old Chevy Caprice. Imagine how many people they might have killed if they had access to everything that Saddam left lying around the country.

What Coalition forces in Iraq are facing isn�t an �army� but a number of people operating it the same fashion that Muhammad and Malvo did: wandering about looking for targets of opportunity. Given the present casualty level, I�d say that the number of active Iraqi insurgents (those killing, as opposed to those attending meetings and pledging their willingness to die for Allah before going home to enjoy Whisky and pornography) is probably a number in the hundreds. A few thousand, at the most, might be added to those numbers if we count those willing to act as members of ad hoc local militias into those numbers.

This means, in essence, that the potential benefit of adding additional troops to the mix would be outweighed by the increased causalities. You can�t just throw whole Army Divisions against the insurgents (except in exceptional cases like Fallujah or the Sadr-inspired uprisings where things have spun out of control). To track down most of these insurgents you need first-rate local intelligence derived from the cooperation of the local population. US forces aren�t ever going to truly get that. To truly run the �mad killer� insurgents to ground, Iraqi forces are going to have to do the work.

So what, then, would these additional troops do? They�d really do nothing, other than provide dozens of new mess tents for the �mad killer� terrorists to lob rockets or mortar shells into. You�d sustain hundreds of additional losses in exchange for a minimal benefit.

The present number of US troops is adequate to perform the essential functions which the United States is called upon to undertake: securing key sites, supporting the new government, preventing overt foreign intervention, attacking Jihadists, and standing at the ready against any attempt at the launch of a more general insurgency. Troops beyond the present level promise nothing more than diminishing returns.

People angry about the troop levels in Iraq are suffering from a failure of imagination. A lot of the people talking seem to think that additional forces could just storm the �bases� the insurgents are using and things would be over with. Far from it. In order to do that you�d have to storm every single house in Iraq at the exact same time. And you�d have to burn down every other potential hiding place while you�re at it.

Carthaginian strategies are wonderful against an enemy you wish to destroy, but foolish against a population you wish to lead to liberty.

All additional troops will do is force the US to assume security roles that should be taken by Iraqi forces as soon as possible. All flooding the country with another 100,000 troops would do is delay the date of Iraq�s political and military self-sufficiency. More troops, ultimately, would mean nothing more than more dead.

The second attack against Rumsfeld is part of the developing effort to point US actions against prisoners as a Nazi-like war crime. This is occurring, of course, mostly from the left but, as in the first attack, the assault is being joined from the right as well. In the case of the right, it�s being supported by alleged conservatives who are smart enough to support the war, but not quite smart enough to accept that strong measures are needed to fight it.

I think, though, that all of this will pass soon enough. When Iraq, about a month from now, holds its first free elections the scale of our achievement there will be undeniable. Better still, it seems likely that the next month will be the high-point of the insurgency in Iraq. As democracy takes root in that nation and free political processes run their course, the government will gain the courage and the political support to take on the killer terrorists who provide the insurgency with its punch.

Rumsfeld may be being beat up upon now, but history will vindicate him.

The Gay Attempt to Rape the Memory of Honest Abe

2004-12-19T18:38:00.000-07:00

There’s a movement at work in the land to rape the memory of Abraham Lincoln. Various individuals, for motives that are there own, are engaging in an attempt to posthumously conscript ol’ Honest Abe into the ranks of the Lavender Brigade. Yes, my friends: the gays are coming for Lincoln.

Frankly, I fear that they’ll be successful. From what I’ve read there’s exactly enough to confuse the stupid and indoctrinate the young. I won’t be at all shocked if, in a decade or so, schoolchildren are routinely taught about the inner turmoil of the painfully closeted 16th President.

The basis of this blasphemous obscenity is a book, entitled The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, written by the late Dr. C.A. Tripp (who just happened to be a disciple of famed fraudulent “sex researcher” Alfred Kinsey) which claims the “out” Lincoln as a homosexual. Already the book has received a great deal of favourable coverage and, quite frankly, I’m sure that it will receive much more as it moves towards release.

Already the matter has been raised in the pages of both the Manchester Guardian and the New York Times. Each, naturally, managed to find some plenty of experts willing to back up this “theory.” As the story gets more coverage with the book’s release, it seems likely that there will be no shortage of Professors, academics, and other assorted “experts” ready to back up its conclusions.

The “evidence” that Lincoln was gay can be summed up as follows:

1) While working on the frontier, he slept in the same bed as other men: an extremely common practice in the day.

2) His marriage was mostly unhappy.

3) His stepmother once said that he wasn’t very fond of girls.

4) He once, in 1829, wrote a humorous poem which mentioned a man mentioned to another man.

5) He and his bodyguard were close during the Civil War (to prove that this has a homosexual link, Dr. Tripp cites an 1895 Regimental History which, to put it mildly, would be unlikely to contain such a thing, even were it to be true).

As a side note, Dr. Tripp began working on the book with a partner who fell out with the good Doctor after accusing him of plagiarism and fabricating evidence that Lincoln was gay. These revelations were, apparently, enough to delay but not enough to stop the publication of the book.

In other words, major newspapers and other organizations are attempting to smear Father Abraham as a homosexual on the basis of distortions, conjecture and rumours being peddled on behalf of a man accused of attempting to fabricate evidence of Lincoln’s supposed homosexuality.

Dr. Tripp is fortunate to be already dead. This kind of thing practically cries out for an Americanized fatwa.

I’m mostly kidding about that last part.

This story will be spread because it provides perfect fodder to advance the agenda of the queer-left coalition. The New York Times is, as is the model, less-than-subtle in spelling out the real point of the story:

Larry Kramer, the author and AIDS activist, said that Mr. Tripp's book
"willchange history."

"It's a revolutionary book because the mostimportant president in the
history of the United States was gay," he said. "Nowmaybe they'll leave us
alone, all those people in the party he founded."

That’s the real point of the whole thing, of course: to embarrass the Republican Party and attempt to force them to swallow the whole of the gay agenda. The left is willing to rape the memory of the nation’s greatest President in order to advance its agenda.

What they’re counting on is the natural agnosticism of most people when confronted with new information. When the average person is presented with information from a theoretically respectable news source, they tend to be willing to accept it or, at the least, they fail to reject it outright. And once this is out there, it’ll spread.

Being not so far removed from Public School classrooms, I can already see that this is information which teachers, especially leftist ones, will latch on to. Children will be indoctrinated with the notion that Lincoln, the greatest President, was gay and so, therefore, there can’t possibly be anything wrong with being gay.

This is revisionist history as its worst: history altered to suit the political purposes of a later day. The names of good men dragged through the mud for the sake of scoring a few points.

More than anything else, this resembles the whole sordid story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, where the less-than-credible findings of a few politically biased individuals were used by the media to advance a political point (in that case, to convince people to ease off on Clinton during the Lewinsky matter).

It is now, of course, popularly accepted that President Jefferson carried on an affair with his slave, Sally Hemmings, and that children were produced as a result of this union. This is, to put it mildly, complete and utter bullshit.

DNA testing in the late 1990’s (ironically, the same testing used to damn Jefferson during the Clinton years) proved that, at the most, one of Sally Hemmings many children was fathered by one of many Jefferson males, most likely Thomas’ half-wit younger brother Randolph who was known for idling away his days hanging out with the Jefferson family slaves. Since that time, the Thomas Jefferson Historical Society has commissioned a panel of scholars who produced a 565-page report which concluded that Jefferson almost certainly did not have a sexual relationship with Hemmings or father any of her children.

But now, of course, it’s far too late for the popular belief to be corrected. People will go on believing the story of a sexual relationship between Jefferson and Hemmings for centuries. In the year 2500, there will probably be a class of schoolchildren orbiting some far-off star reading about it.

That’s why it’s important to speak out about this slander now, before it spreads. Once the rape has been actually committed, nothing can ever quite be put right again.

Hyper-Sensitivity in War

2004-12-16T23:01:00.000-07:00

For a variety of reasons, I think that it’s fairly safe to say that we’re going to hear a lot in the coming months about Abu Ghraib and other incidents of “abuse” in Iraq. I say this both because the so-called “torture memos” that Alberto Gonzalez wrote as White House Counsel are sure to be a big deal during the Senate hearings to confirm him as Attorney General and because it’s now become quite clear to me that the media (and those Republicans eager to court favor with the media) are now out to get Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. All of this, in my view, is truly a shame.

Now, let’s get something straight. I don’t think that the abuse of prisoners is a positive thing. In fact, I think that it’s wrong to treat anyone sadistically as a matter of sport. But, the corresponding point is this: even though I think it’s wrong, I don’t particularly care about it either. It’s fairly close to my view on homosexuality: it’s gross but, if you keep it out of my sight, I don’t much care what you do.

Look, ladies and gentlemen: this is a war, not tea-time. People are going to be abused. People are going to be senselessly killed. Those things happen in war. If you can’t accept that, you should stop paying attention.

Nothing bugs me more than the people who claim to support the war but who fly off the handle, consumed by some sort of sick grief, when discussing a few “tortured” terrorists. At least the people opposed to war have an excuse for weeping like babies for the enemies of freedom: they’re already openly on the same side.

One of the great myths out there about torture is that it “doesn’t work.” That is, to put is simply, obvious nonsense. If torture really didn’t work, then humans wouldn’t have used it as a reliable means of information extraction for centuries. If torture really didn’t work then interrogators wouldn’t want the power to resort to its use during “ticking bomb” situations. If torture really didn’t work the Israeli Supreme Court, which has as much experience on the issue as any other court in the world, wouldn’t allow considerations of necessity to be used as a mitigating factor when considering the sentences of people charged with torture.

Of course torture works. What doesn’t work is a straw-man argument constructed by the left and civil libertarians which holds that torture doesn’t work because someone being tortured will, “tell you whatever you want to hear.”

That’s true: but that’s only going to be a matter if either the person conducting the torture is inept or if the objective of the torment isn’t the extraction of information, but the coercion of false statements (IE: “Comrade Krutuv was privy to the details of the plotting of Trotskyite counterrevolutionary saboteurs and worked to assist them in spreading false news of crop failures.”).

A competent individual will easily be able to use torture to extract necessary information. It that truly wasn’t the cause, we wouldn’t even be talking about this.

Torture or other similar things may not be pleasant, but they may also be necessary. We can’t afford to be hyper-sensitive in war.

One of my greatest fears is that the Global War on Terrorism is being stalled by an ultra-caring and radically litigious culture which is more wrapped up with the rights of killers than results. It’s bad enough that police are handcuffed in this country by the decisions of lunatic judges: are we to fight wars the same way as well?

The culture of sensitivity, this cult of emotion, it isn’t just an annoyance: it’s a major danger. On at least two occasions already it’s been the primary cause of foreign policy problems which would otherwise have been avoided.

In the first Gulf War, in 1991, the US held off on destroying the Iraqi Army as it retreated from Kuwait because it feared that the images it was creating would anger the Moslem world and, more importantly, because it upset the stomachs of some in the US chain of command. Had the Iraqi forces been utterly obliterated, as ought to have happened, the odds are much higher than Saddam Hussein would have been overthrown in 1991.

In the opening stages of the Iraq War, US forces sought to minimize Iraqi casualties when, in truth, a much more prudent strategy would have been to drive them to the highest levels possible. Now the US is paying for that miscalculation in blood.

We need to learn to accept the realities of war. People die, and often that’s a good thing. People are tortured and abused and, while that’s never a happy occasion, that may be necessary as well.

We can’t fight and win a war if our field of action is limited by the afternoon-special morality of the Oprah-watching crowd.

Vietnam in Iraq

2004-12-14T22:42:00.000-07:00

I’m going to come right out and say it: the situation on the ground in Iraq is increasingly beginning to resemble that in Vietnam during the war down. No, I haven’t become a commie-lib. Let me finish. The situation on the ground in Iraq, by all appearances, turned into a slow war of attrition. Insurgents and foreign terrorists are being slowly defeated. Above all other things, the situation appears to be under control.

Iraq is not Vietnam in 1968: Iraq is Vietnam in 1972. The enemy has slowly, but surely, been brought to heel. The fighting has been difficult and things have not always gone perfectly. But they’ve gone well enough. Iraqi forces, while not perfect, are fighting. Over the next several years, US forces will be able to reduce their numbers while the remaining forces will assist local Iraqi forces in fighting local enemies.

When people think of the end of the Vietnam War they always think of Saigon in 1975. I suppose that’s normal. But it also distorts the military lessons of the war.

People often mock the claims of those who say that the US had effectively won the Vietnam War by the time of the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. But their derision does not alter the essential truth of that statement: when direct US involvement in South Vietnam ceased in 1973, US war aims had been achieved. The insurgency from within South Vietnam had been defeated and South Vietnamese forces were strong enough to, with continued US aid, maintain South Vietnamese independence. It was only a series of improbable and unexpected events which led to the defeat of the Republic of Vietnam. Had US aid continued at expected levels, there would be a free South Vietnam to this very day.

In Iraq, Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush adopted the strategies which brought about the US victory of 1972 early. That’s the simple and plain reason why they’ve refused to introduce additional troops into the Iraqi theatre of operations: more troops simply means more targets for the enemy and more responsibilities assumed by the United States. That’s entirely the opposite of what’s being sought here.

The President has held back from deploying additional troops, even when the short-term benefits would have been high, because the risk of being sucked into a Vietnam-style conundrum, where the United States is forced to assume virtually all local responsibilities, is much too high. This has mean talking a tight-rope. There have to be enough US troops in the country to respond to major challenges, but not so many that they become expected to assume total command and that Iraqi forces are ignored and allowed to languish.

The last few months and the next month will probably mark the highest single-month death tolls for the war. Obviously US losses were going to be high during the Battle of Fallujah, which was the largest urban engagement by the United States Marine Corps since Hue during the Vietnam War. Further, it’s fairly obvious that insurgent attacks are going to pick up during the run-up to Iraq’s first democratic elections. That’s all to be expected.

All of this, however, disguises the essential truth that all attempts to create an uprising of a truly national character: all attempts to forge something which might be credibly claimed to be a true “resistance movement” have failed. The enemy in Iraq is not a broad uprising of the Iraqi people: it’s a motley collection of bitter-enders, foreigners, and the sort of riff-raff who would be members of street gangs had they been born in the State of California instead of Al-Anbar Province.

I don’t think that anyone has a firm idea on the actual number of insurgents in Iraq but, from what I’ve been reading, I don’t think the number of actual fighters is very high at all. There might be 10,000 or so (and perhaps many more) in the whole of the country if you count everyone who screams “Allah Akhbar” at a meeting as a full-fledged resistance fighter. But, as some of my devoted readers are very fond of reminding me, people who scream are, for the most part, not all that likely to do.

Read the casualty reports and the reports of terrorist attacks. They’re all basically the same. Occasionally it’s gunmen. More often it’s bombs planted by the side of the road. US casualties are unacceptably high but, given the level of weapons and resources known to be at the disposal of the terrorists, they’re also rather low.

There just aren’t that many terrorist fighters actually conducting operations in Iraq. Probably no more than a few hundred full time. This is good news and bad news. The good news is, of course, that the scale of the problem is smaller than popularly believed. The bad news is that individuals operating in the way described are extremely hard to catch.

Think back to October of 2002 when the DC Snipers were operating. Major law enforcement resources were devoted to catching these people by a number of states, the District of Columbia and the Federal Government. During this period, the two Snipers were actively killing people with a rifle. They were killing people who they had to be close enough to see. Still, it took weeks to catch them and, when it did happen, is occurred as much by chance as by anything else.

This, of course, was with police who intimately knew the country they were going over. Now, imagine that Muhammad and Malvo had been leaving improvised explosive devices by the side of the road. How long would it have taken to catch them doing that?

So that’s both the good news and the bad news. This insurgency can’t win, but it can go on killing people for a long time. Look at the length of time it took Germany to deal with the Red Brigades during the 1970’s: and those only consisted of, at the most, a few dozen people.

As in Vietnam in 1972, there is exactly zero chance that the internal forces operating within Iraq will be capable of defeating the forces of the government. Similarly, Iraqi forces are reaching a point where they will, with American assistance, be capable of handling external threats as well.

The danger is not a military defeat for US forces: the danger is demoralization leading to a defeat as it did in Vietnam in 1975. Iraq could probably hold together for a little bit after a US withdrawal at this point, but not for more than a few years. It’s vital that the United States maintains its resolve to assist the Iraqi Government in fighting the insurgency and that it guard against Syrian or Iranian moves against the new government.

Fundamentally, the situation in Iraq calls for the US to respond by simply staying the present course. There’s no need to radically alter US strategy. A gradualist approach will bring victory over the course of the next several years.

If the US keeps fighting terrorists, training Iraqi forces, and gradually distributing reconstruction aid, then everything will turn out fine in the end. The danger lies not in the present course, but in radical alterations to it.

There’s not going to be a day when we know that we’ve won. The fighting may continue sporadically for many years. It might even go on for decades. But a secure Iraq will be preserved. As Iraqi forces improve, some US forces will be withdrawn. There will probably be a large (at least Division-sized) residual force in Iraq for decades, to act in emergencies. But troops numbers will decline.

Above all we must maintain confidence that, if we remain confident, things will work out in the end.

Islam Delenda Est

2004-12-12T19:19:00.000-07:00

I hate to admit to it but, in the weeks immediately following September 11th, I initially bought into the widely-circulated platitudes about the ‘peaceful’ nature of Islam. It would be fair to say (if one were trying to put it as mildly as possible) that my position has since changed.

Many have noted in recent months that I’ve spent an increasing amount of time discussing the broader Islamic threat as opposed to merely the Islamist threat. That’s because I’ve come to a simple conclusion: if Western Civilization is to survive, Islam must be destroyed. The two are not compatible and cannot co-exist on a single planet.

Some of the bolder souls on the right have moved beyond the initial belief that the present war is merely against “terrorism” to the more specific belief that we are fighting “Islamists.” But, allow me to ask a question: how are we to distinguish what is Islamist from what is merely Islamic? The answer, in truth, is that we can’t. The Islamist operative planning to blow up the Sears Tower is to the Moslem in Tehran what the Communist agent in Washington was to the Moscow factory worker in the Cold War. Both are part of the same evil system, only their guilt differs.

Islamism is merely the leading edge of Islam. Islamism and Islam are, in practice, one and the same. It’s just that the Islamist detonates the bombs while the simple supporter of Islam merely cheers the news of their detonation.

The only way I see to draw a distinction between the Islam and Islamism is to take and judge each individual on a case-by-case basis. This is, of course, not possible. Just as we were forced to act against all of Germany for the crimes of Nazism, so too must all of Islam pay for the crimes of the Islamists.

There may well be some “good Moslems” out there. If there are, I say: let them speak now or forever hold their peace. Most of the Moslem world is silent about the crimes of their co-religionists.

“Islam” isn’t just a religion: it’s a political ideology prepared to offer a serious challenge to the supremacy of the West. “Islam”, as I speak of it, is no benign creed: it is a faith of action on the march, determined to win for its adherents a leading place in world affairs. Ultimately, it is a totalitarian ideology which seeks the same sort of universal control over human affairs as its true predecessors, Communism and Nazism, did.

Just as we confronted and destroyed both Nazism and Communism, we must do the same for Islam.

This is not to say that one or the other will be destroyed in a Holy War (though that may be the case) but it is to say that one will be transformed and ultimately consumed by the other. I do not as of now know which will be destroyed. But we will all know it before long.

The words call to me from the recess of the Western mind: Islam Delenda Est. Islam must be destroyed. Again and again, they come. These are words that emanate from a dark place, where men are stripped of all pretence and formality, but it does not change their essential truth. For one to survive, the other must fall. Islam must be destroyed.

This does not mean that it is necessary or desirable that everyone who call themselves a Moslem be killed, far from it. It is to say that it is necessary that the basic structures of their lives be transformed.

Islam can be destroyed in two ways: as Communism was destroyed or as Nazism was destroyed.

By invading Iraq, President Bush has clearly chosen to destroy Islam in the same way that the United States destroyed Soviet Communism. Spread the ideals of freedom and the truth of democracy, this line of reasoning goes, and no totalitarian society can survive. The world of modern Islam, this theory holds, will collapse in the face of freedom and be replaced by a new society which, ideally, will be post-Islamic in the way that our societies are post-Christian.

I hope and pray that President Bush’s strategy will work. It’s certainly better than the only other alternative (basically a phased surrender) which has any popular support. But I’m not so sure that it will work.

The great problem with staging our battle against Islam over the long-term is this: the demographics are not on our side. It took forty-five years to win the Cold War. Do we have forty-five years to wait for the collapse of modern Islam?

Consider: as things stand today, eight million of France’s sixty million people are Moslems. The Moslem birth rate (plus continued immigration) means that the Islamic population of France is rapidly increasing while its native population is actually shrinking. What will the composition of the French population be in thirty years?

It’s not at all hard to envision the emergence of a Moslem majority in France during my lifetime. Already, France’s Moslems are having a disastrous effect on French foreign policy, leading towards an even more pronounced anti-American tilt in both action and rhetoric.

France is, of course, the typical example. So let me offer another one: Canada. In 1991 there were about 250,000 Moslems in Canada. By 2001 there were nearly 600,000. And that’s just the official estimate: given widespread illegal entry and other forms of lawlessness, I suspect (and the Moslem community claims) that the actual number is much higher. It’s not at all implausible to believe that, in a few decades, Moslems will make up higher than 10% of Canada’s population and that, if the numbers were allowed to increase unchecked from there, that Canada would eventually end up in a France-like bind.

In the present conflict waiting will equal a victory for the other side. Islam is winning its war with the West not on the battlefield but in the delivery room.

Someone Who Should Be Shot

2004-12-09T21:04:00.000-07:00

I hate Jeremy Hinzman. I want him dead. The “American” deserter from the 82nd Airborne Division, presently attempting to convince a review board that he should be allowed to remain in Canada as a refugee, is scum of the worst sort. The world can only be made better by his inevitable exit to Hell.

Just to make it very certain that everyone understands what I am saying: I do not believe that Jeremy Hinzman should be shot by vigilantes or that any action to harm him should be taken extra-legally. That’s my disclaimer. I feel it’s necessary because of what I’m going to say next: Jeremy Hinzman, for his crime of deserting from the United States Army and entering Canada to claim refugee status, deserves to be executed by firing squad. I would consider it a high honor to personally witness the life draining out of the bullet-riddled body of the traitorous scumbag.

He should be executed, his wife should be jailed for aiding his desertion, and his son should be taken away and given to a morally decent family. That’s what I think of Jeremy Hinzman. The fact that this alleged man is living in Canada, living off of the tax dollars I pay, I find to be absolutely enraging.

The only people I have more contempt for in this world than the terrorists are Americans who turn into traitors like “Mr.” Hinzman and John Walker Lindh. We shouldn’t be shocked, coming out of the tradition that he does, to get what we get from Bin Laden and his ilk: but this, from our own, we do not need.

Since we’re in Canada, of course, he’s not going to go back to the death he deserves since, even if the US Army still did shoot deserters, we wouldn’t extradite him to go and meet that richly-deserved fate.

Such a pity.

Terrorists are Enemies of the Human Race

2004-12-09T17:28:00.000-07:00

The dumbest political episode of this past year was the torrents of fake outrage and abuse hurled at the Bush Administration over the Abu Ghraib prisoner “abuse” “scandal.” So far as I’m concerned, the real wrong committed at Abu Ghraib was committed not by the US Army and not by the Bush Administration, but by CBS News and others who reported on something which, in wartime, ought to have been covered up and dumped deep into a file for some mid-level scholar to discover and write a journal article about in thirty or forty years.

Oh, sure, the soldiers involved should have been punished. Their actions showed a total lack of discipline and, much worse, threatened to create a political problem for the Administration both and home and abroad. For that alone they should have been punished. But, beyond the distastefulness of a bunch of National Guardsmen behaving like High School football players during a particularly degenerate hazing season, I can’t summon up any real moral outrage over the things they did.

We need to get the thing straight once and for all: terrorists are not regular foes. Anti-American terrorists, their supporters, and their sympathizers are not just “enemies” in the conventional sense of the word. They are enemies of the human race and deserve to be treated as such. Terrorists, their supporters, and their sympathizers aren’t honourable foes to be met on the battlefield, worthy both of our respect, they’re sub-human monsters deserving of our deepest scorn and hatred. They’re useless beasts that need to be exterminated.

The real problem I have with complaints about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo is that they start from the basic premise that terrorists have “human rights” which are deserving of respect. To treat terrorists with even the most basic level of respect is an insult to the dignity of all other people. They’re monsters, not people.

To the extent that we keep terrorists alive at all, it should be for some necessary purpose. If we need information from them, we should extract it by the best and quickest means open to us and then dispose of them. Perhaps those terrorists who grovel for their lives and possess a great quantity of useful information might be allowed to live in exchange for cooperation, but that should be about it.

By worrying about “abuse” and the “human rights” of terrorists we are, to a great extent, treating them like they’re ordinary criminals. By housing them in clean cells at Guantanamo and taking care to abide by the absurd standards of various international human rights conventions, we are according them a status that they do not deserve and we are twisting our own perceptions.

To be ultimately successful the Global War on Terrorism must be a war of extermination.

What is required for victory in such a war is a program of de-humanization. By worrying about the “rights” of terrorists and showcasing them as “victims”, we help to make them seem more like humans in the eyes of the public.

Where an acknowledgement of humanity exists the seeds of empathy are sown. Empathy leads inexorably to sympathy, at least at a personal level, which will eventually erode the support necessary for the sort of all-out war which must be waged if we are to ever attain the final victory we so desperately require.

President Bush has laid out, and I support, a two-track plan for dealing with the terrorists. We will work to reform the Islamic world, to de-fang it if you will, by spreading democracy outwards from the islands of freedom that have been created in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That solves (or, eventually will solve) much of the problem. It still leaves us, however, with the problem of what to do with that small percentage of the Islamic world who is actively engaged in acts of support for al-Qaeda.

For these alleged “people” there is, as I’ve said, only one workable option: annihilation. They’re too far-gone to cure. Like a cancer they cannot be healed, only destruction will end the threat they pose.

Such a campaign must, I think, ultimately move beyond what we’ve already seen. I think that the core of any campaign to truly wipe out the Islamists would be a well-planned and swiftly-executed set of strikes designed to kill those who truly help sustain the Islamist tide.

Part of this must be a campaign of assassinations directed at two groups of people: the preachers and the pushers. There’s a widespread belief that killing leaders and public figures “only makes martyrs.” I am not an adherent of this belief. Perhaps the killing of a single leader only makes a martyr: the killing of a hundred just makes corpses.

We need to breach the artificial wall that now seems to separate the military and “civilian” side of Islamism, for it is the civil side: the radical Imams, the shops which sell Islamist propaganda and the web sites which store Islamist videos which feed the military side. The shelf-life of people in the military wing of Islamism is short.

In order to truly destroy Islamism, we need to start blowing up the Mosques which are used to preach hate and recruit. We need to shoot in the streets the supposedly “peaceful” Imams and Professors who, from all over the Islamic world, recruit men for Jihad.

Remember: cash goes a long way in the Moslem world. It wouldn’t be at all hard for a few dozen operatives, with access to hundreds of millions of dollars in clean American $20 bills, to do a lot of damage.

I don’t imagine it would be at all hard to find a gang of Pakistani thugs willing to burn down Madrassas in the dead of the night in exchange for a few hundred dollars each. I don’t know what the going rate it: but I’ll bet that a million dollars will buy at least twenty-five murders in most of the Moslem world.

Ultimately, one of the best ways to take the fight to the Islamists is to turn their tactics back against them. For example: one of the ways that they generate the money to fund their terrorist enterprises is through a variety of front businesses. There’s no real reason why these businesses or people who work for them should be immune from attack.

What’s needed is a program of counter-terrorism designed to wipe these malevolent creatures out.

The Worst Act Moslem Terror in Canadian History

2004-12-08T22:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the fifteenth anniversary of what I regard as the most deadly Islamist attack in the history of Canada. As goes without saying, this aspect of the incident was not reported.

The story is universally known to all Canadians and is, I suspect, reasonably well-known in other parts of the world. On December 6th, 1989 a man named “Marc Lepine” entered the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, pulled out a rifle, ordered all of the men out of the classroom he had entered and proceeded to kill fourteen women and wound another fifteen. He left a suicide note in which he raged against “feminists” and so forth. Since then, December 6th has turned into a day on which both men in general and gun-owning men in particular have been roundly denounced.

That, at least, is the conventional narrative. Now here’s (to borrow Paul Harvey’s wonderful phrase) the rest of the story. The real name of “Marc Lepine” was (wait for it) Gamil Gharbi. His father was a Moslem from Algeria who believed (and taught his son) that all women were chattel. Naturally he gave his son rigorous lessons in the grand Islamic tradition of spousal abuse, beating his wife regularly in the presence of his won. This is, of course, a tradition at least as deeply-rooted in Islam as the age-old practice of going to an Inter-faith meeting on Thursday night to explain the peaceful nature of Islam and then going to the Mosque on Friday night to call for the murder of Christians and Jews.

The hard (and virtually unknown) truth is this: the “Montreal Massacre” wasn’t an example of generic “violence against women” or something that demonstrated the need for repressive gun control measures: it was the worst ever act of Islamic-inspired terror in Canada.

Now, I don’t know if Gamil Gharbi was formally a member of the Moslem faith when he committed his crime: I don’t think it really matters. One only need read his suicide note, oozing with contempt for women, and compare it to (for one example) the letter left behind by Mohammed Atta (in which he demanded that his grave not be contaminated by the presence of women) to discern the origins of his hate.

If, as was tried in the case of the Oklahoma City bombing and has been tried in this case, outside influences can be held to share in the blame for the actions of a deranged individual, then Islam must claim much of the credit for the things that Gharbi did. In his method of indiscriminate slaughter, in his pathological hatred of women, and by his heritage: Gharbi must be considered a sort of proto-Islamist.

Now, it may well be true that Gamil Gharbi was eventually raised away from his father and supposedly developed his hatred of women on his own. But the seeds of it: the “root cause” of it, to borrow a favourite phrase of the left, was clearly his Mohammedan heritage.

I do not deny that the Moslem faith can be practiced peacefully. I myself have known peaceful Moslems (but then, those same peaceful Moslems I’m thinking of now were also heavy drinkers, so their fidelity may be in doubt). But that does not detract from the real and obvious fact that Islam, practiced as advocated by Fundamentalists (who are in the ascension in much of the Islamic world) is fundamentally harmful.

We don’t want to take about whether it was Gamil Gharbi’s Moslem father’s attitudes (which appear to have not deviated all that far from the commands of that book, whose name I dare not speaks, which commands and commends wife-beating, among other things) led to what happened in Montreal because it would mean having a serious discussion about things like immigration (and whether we really want to be headed towards a country where one in ten persons is a Moslem) or religion and whether or not those sects of the faith that, wherever they are preached, lead to terrorism and violence need to be examined.

If we included Gamil Gharbi’s Mohammedan background alongside the other potential causes of his crimes (including, the laughably-commonly cited ‘war movies’ thing, as though watching Patton too many times leads one inevitably to mass murder) we’d have to answer the question: what’s wrong with Islam? And that is a question that the Western world does not want to answer.

Needless to say: this is not reported by the Canadian press. They love to use December 6th to demonize all men as would-be abusers and killers of women and to agitate against the most magnificent and useful tool ever devised by man: the gun.

This is not to say that men as a whole were blameless in this particular case of violence against women, though: if there’s anything that the men should be blamed for, it’s for leaving the female students to die after the madman Gharbi pulled out his rifle. The idea that all of the men in the classroom filed neatly out of the room in order to allow the terrorist to go about his work is more than appalling: it’s sickening.

Though one can never be sure of what one will do in a crisis, I’m pretty sure that it’s fair to say that a group of “men” who gamely file out of a room and wait outside while a killer goes about his work don’t really deserve the honor of being called men. There’s something disgustingly “Canadian” about that response. It’s the response of a people trained by the state and by the media to behave like obedient sheep. One suspects that, had Flight 93 on September 11th been filled with modern Canadian men of that type, they’d have sat calmly in their seats, watched the in-flight movie, and cheerfully accepted the end.

Men don’t need to be “educated about violence against women”, they need to be educated about how to stop violence against women. Not, of course, as the activists mean it (“together, we’ll stop violence with Purple Ribbons and full-page newspaper ads!”), but as men traditionally have: with weapons and, failing that, with fists. I think that all Canadian men, and Canadian men in the past have been known to demonstrate courage, should consider it a mark of shame that not a single man thought to raise his fists or grab a weapon to attempt to do something, anything, to stop the terrorists.

True, not every school massacre or event like it in the United States has been met with resistance: but many have. People tried to tackle the Columbine killers. The passengers on Flight 93 resisted once they realized what was happening. At a law school in West Virginia, a student went and got his gun and shot the killer. The idea of the men simply filing out of the room, leaving the women to their fate, seems to me to be an egregious example of craven cowardice.

But then again, this did happen in Quebec, where a majority opposed participation in both World Wars and where the populace actively resisted service in wars being fought, at least in part, to preserve the freedom of France. So perhaps we should be shamed, but not surprised. I’m certain that Albertan men would have given a good accounting of themselves.

If anything, the entire thing makes the case not for gun control, but for gun proliferation. The crazed Gharbi, running about in search of women to kill, could probably have been taken down with one shot by someone with a concealed pistol. If the Mohammedan killer had tried his stunt in Texas or Georgia, someone would have gone out to their truck, picked up their rifle, gone back in and tried to kill the bastard.

I’ve long said, and nothing I’ve yet seen has shaken my belief, that a universally-armed society is the best solution to most forms of crime, spree killing, and terrorism. If every second person is packing, a killing “spree” is going to kill two people instead of fourteen. Robberies, burglaries, car thefts and the other crimes which tend to effect much more of the public than (relatively rare) crimes like murder are going to drop pretty rapidly when you’re as likely to get shot as get someone’s wallet.

Let December 6th stand not as a memorial to mere “violence against women”, let it stand as a monument to the much-deeper troubles that it exposed. Let is stand as our memorial to let nothing, not even a massacre, stand in the way of our blithe acceptance of those multicultural pieties which hold that all forms of religion must be accepted as equal and always held blameless (excepting, of course, Christianity which is well-established as the root cause of every evil event in the history of the world including the suicide of Socrates and the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War).

December 6th should stand as a memorial as well to the softening of our culture. A day of shame to commemorate our inability and unwillingness to defend either ourselves or others.

David Brooks, in the NYT

2004-12-07T16:03:00.000-07:00

In the Times, David Brooks discusses the people who just might save America. He calls them the "New Red Diaper Babies."

It's a very good piece, which discusses what might preserve America in the coming storm.

How Not to Fight Crime

2004-12-06T09:42:00.000-07:00

Mark Steyn in the Telegraph.

Bush’s New Deal

2004-12-06T01:12:00.000-07:00

In the first year of his second term, President Bush has the chance to have enacted the most comprehensive program of domestic reform since that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. If you read things carefully, it has become increasingly clear that the program that the President has in mind is one of the most ambitious proposed in recent years. Certainly, it is the most comprehensive since that of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Moreover, given what we know of the President’s temperament and understanding the composition of the Congress, it appears likely that he’ll be able to get much of what he wants done.

The time for Social Security reform has come. Everyone in America knows this. Outmoded pyramid-scheme style pension plans are carnivorous dinosaurs which threaten to destroy the economy of virtually every nation which has one in place. Unless something is massively changed (and unless the changes are made soon) these execrable rip-offs will eventually bankrupt virtually every country in the Western world.

President Bush knows this. During the campaign he continued to push for the sort of bold reforms that Social Security needs and the Democrats’ scare-tactics didn’t work. The conventional wisdom, that Social Security reform is a career-killing issue, is clearly dead.

What form the final program will take is as yet unknown. It doesn’t really matter in the short-term, since we won’t know whether whatever is done will be truly successful for years. What matters for now is that, for the first time in decades, something substantive will get done. Whatever it is that does get pushed through will make the system more market-oriented. It’ll add elements of personal ownership to the system.

But it isn’t just Social Security that’s up for reform. We don’t yet know what final form the Intelligence Reform bill will take, but we know that it’s going to be the most comprehensive overhaul of that system since the time, five and a half decades ago now, when the CIA and the other Cold War agencies were originally created.

The other elements of the program aren’t clear yet. Social Security reform will probably take a year or more. A vacancy or two on the Supreme Court will probably tie up the Senate and freeze other business for months. And, of course, there remain the “unknown unknowns” like those which halted action on much of the Bush domestic agenda in the first term.

But these things are going to get done, one way or another. The President is determined and when this President wants to get something done it has a strange way of getting done.

Tax reform, Health reform, and the Gay Marriage Amendment all figure somewhere on the agenda. They probably won’t all get done: they’re reforms of opportunity. The Federal Marriage Amendment will probably only go through if first the Supreme Court overturns some state’s gay marriage amendment.

What the President is working on, fundamentally, is the restructuring of the United States Government for the Twenty-First century. Bill Clinton talked a lot about “building a bridge to the 21st century”, but George W. Bush is going to be the one do to the actual construction.

President Bush’s agenda promises to lay the foundation of a lasting Republican majority. The concept of the “Ownership Society” which means, in essence, the reform of government and the economy to end old-fashioned entitlements and replace them with individual ownership of things like pensions and health accounts is not only good for the economy, but it’s good for the Republican Party as well.

Think about it for a second. How are the Democrats likely to respond to any actual attempt to push Social Security reform? We all already know the answer. They’re going to respond with sad stories about old people eating dog food and starving in the streets. Their leaders are going to shout at and denounce the people proposing even the mildest reforms as though they were proposing to gas all American citizens when the reach the age of thirty as a method of population control.

That all works perfectly well when you don’t seriously expect reform to be enacted: it doesn’t work quite as well when it is. People who make repeated false predictions of Armageddon are not the people who most of us wish to administer our pensions (or, for that matter, to protect us from terrorists).

By desperately fighting reform and casting themselves at its enemies, the Democratic Party is going to make a horrible mistake: it’s going to flip roles with the Republican Party on Social Security. Because it was Democrats who originally created Social Security and Republicans who fought it, there’s always been a lingering suspicion (one encouraged by both the media and the Democratic Party) that the Republican Party is out to destroy the system. No matter how slavishly Republicans have adhered to the system, there’s always been an impossible-to-dispel and easy-to-rekindle shadow cast over Republican motives.

When a Republican President and a Republican Congress reform Social Security and the Democrats fight it with utter savagery and desperation, the Democratic Party is going to be forever cast as the enemy of the new system. Since, all hyperbole aside, Social Security reform is likely to be successful, this is going to be a long-term problem for the party. Where, in the past, Democrats could always make political hay out of accusing Republicans of planning to privatize the system, now Republicans will be able to accuse the Democrats of planning to nationalize it.

If the Democratic Party were institutionally smart, it would now fully embrace Social Security reform and allow no space between itself and the President on this issue. After all, respectable Democrats like Daniel Patrick Moynihan supported reform, so it isn’t that far of a leap. They could say things like, “Democrats created Social Security, and now we’re going to save it.” Republicans would have no choice but to go along with it.

Thankfully, the Democratic Party isn’t all that bright.

This is an exciting time in American political life. Ever-so-quietly Bush is preparing to launch his own New Deal.

Islam in Europe

2004-12-05T01:01:00.000-07:00

David Pryce-Jones has an excellent piece in Commentary on the Islamicization of Europe.

The Domestication of Man

2004-12-01T22:15:00.000-07:00

Frankly, I sometimes fear that our society is too “civilized”. We’re too far removed from some of the primal instincts of man: from that killer instinct which drove our ascent over the other species of the Earth and which built the civilizations whose comforts we now enjoy. Man, I often worry, has been domesticated.

If there’s one group of people that sickens me as much as liberals it’s people who understand the things that are necessary for victory in war or justice at home, but who recoil from those things. Prime among those people are the ‘conservatives’ who vigorously supported the Iraq War right up until the revelation of the Abu Ghraib prisoner “abuse” scandal and those whose ‘principled’ objection to the death penalty ultimately comes down to the fact that they lack the nerve to kill even when it is right and just to do so.

It’s these people who worry me the most: people who understand, on an intellectual level, what needs to be done, but who simply have had the capability of doing that bred out of them.

Strangely, the moment where I came to regard this as a serious problem was in one of the oddest of all possible places: the end of a Tom Clancy novel. It was The Bear and the Dragon, I think. China has fired a nuclear-tipped ICBM at Washington, DC. President Jack Ryan refused to move out from under where the blast will fall because he knows he lacks the will to order a retaliatory nuclear strike. Luckily, in the book, a US ABM system takes down the Chinese missile. But it won’t always happen that way.

What scared me about that was this: Jack Ryan was deliberately designed to be the macho (however much I loathe the word, it applies) hero of action novels. I never saw a word of objection to this section from fans: they all seemingly took it as perfectly normal that a President would lack the courage to do what is just and right. Worse still, it was presented as praiseworthy: a sort of badge of honor on Ryan’s character. That’s what scared me: not only did no one find it objectionable that President Ryan would fail to do his duty, but some would find his dereliction of duty to be praiseworthy.

Later, I discussed it with other people. Few, if any, saw what I was on about. “What’s the point of retaliating in a nuclear war?” more than one asked, “why kill all those people.” Those people lacked the will to do what is necessary. Harry Truman understood that it was necessary to drop atomic bombs on Japan to end the war, save American lives, and send a message to the world.

Earlier in the war, FDR and Churchill saw that it was necessary to fire-bomb German and Japanese cities in order to win the war. Millennia earlier, the Romans saw that it was necessary to destroy Cartage in order to ensure that it never threatened Rome again.

But, today, most would recoil from such action. If, tomorrow, China were to destroy Los Angeles and kill ten million Americans with nuclear weapons, I have little doubt that about half the country could quickly be convinced to oppose nuclear retaliation. More and more, there are real men out there like the fictional Jack Ryan: men who understand what must be done, but are incapable of doing it. I call these people “Domesticated Men.”

Domesticated animals are nice amusements and companions: but they’re not suited to survive without outside protection. If my kind-hearted cat were to find himself alone in the dark against some vicious wild animal he’d have exactly two choices: run or die and, in any case, there’s no certainty that the former would work. In the wild, ultimately, you have two choices: kill, or be killed. The only animals who survive in the wild without the capacity for combat are those which are adept at running and hiding.

The same, I think, is true among the peoples of the Earth. There’s a tidal wave coming: a demographic tidal wave in which the stronger people, those without as much “culture”, “refinement” and “sophistication” as we of the West have threaten to swamp and drown us. A few far-sighted people can see it come. A brave few have tried to warn of it, despite the near certainty that such courageous individuals will be libellously derided as racists and bigots.

In this world the strong people, the people with the will to win, always do win and the weak peoples, the people without the stomachs to do what is necessary, always lose. That is the way of things. More importantly, in a philosophical sense it’s the way things ought to be.

Most in the West are taken in by the delusion that we can simply sit back and that the wider world will freeze. They’re captivated by the mad fantasy that, if only we learn to turn our back on some of the baser instincts of man, so will the rest of the world. And so they may: but not before they’re done with us.

The final blow to the Roman Empire in the West was delivered by savage hordes. The Greeks were destroyed by unwashed Romans and barbarians from Macedonia who then went on to finally destroy the glorious Persian Empire. It’s a consistent pattern of history: cultures grow decadent, convinced of the permanence of their superiority, and are eventually destroyed.

It is the natural order of things. But we cannot allow it to come to pass this time. Their must be a revival, a new renaissance, in the West.

It is plain as day who the rising peoples and who the fading peoples are. It is the Chinese, the Indians, and Moslems who are on the rise in this world and it is the European that is in decline. The fate of the American is yet to be determined. That is where the demographics point and that is the pattern to which the politics will eventually adjust.

Fantasies about a “United States of Europe” which may someday challenge the United States are the fanciful ravings of delusional men. Europe is dying. I doubt if it will be possible to resuscitate it without a resort to extreme measures of the sort from which even strong men would recoil.

As I see, that’s an almost unchangeable fact: here and there, bits of Europe might adjust and survive to see the new world but Europe as we know it is dead. The Europe of 2050 will be a place nearly-run (or actually run) by semi-Europeanized Moslems who will preside over an empire of elderly European pensioners, a handful of angry white people, and a rising Islamic tide. The best possible future I see for Europe is one in which the residents eye eachother warily from well-fenced and well-guarded residential compounds in which they remain perpetually locked as a result of endemic racial and religious violence. And that, I’ll add again, is the best-case scenario. I think that it’s far more likely that the Europe of my old age will look something like Yugoslavia writ large.

Here in the Americas, there’s still a chance for Western Civilization: but it will not be easy. We need to harden people for the hard years ahead. I think that the coming century will be one in which we will never know a moment’s peace.

Our present fight with the terrorists obscures the larger problem: the demographic rise of Islam, relative to the decline of Christianity. The deadliest threat to the long-term future of Western civilization isn’t the suicide bomber: it’s the dedicated Wahhabi mother of eight. The present battle is just a skirmish, a prologue to the greater challenge to come.

What do we do when Moslems make up a third of the world’s people, as they may well by mid-century? They will demand a third of the world’s wealth and, quite naturally, they will soon seek more than that.

The same is true of the Chinese and the Indians. We haven’t adequately thought through the implications of nations with a billion and a half people each and rising economic strength. They’re going to want their place in the Sun as well.

Looking ahead, I don’t see a way out for anyone that doesn’t end in mass-death, cities burning, and all the rest of that jazz. There’s no way out, save the hard one.

I have developed a program for ensuring long-term American dominance which I will be laying out in the days ahead.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers, nor that my ideas are perfect: but we need to start talking.

We need to talk about what kind of world we want to have in five decades time.

We need to talk about what we’re prepared to do and what we’re prepared to sacrifice for the survival of Western Civilization.

More on Social Security Reform

2004-11-30T23:02:00.000-07:00

George Will says that Alan Greenspan should be made the next Secretary of the Treasury in order to oversee Social Security reform.

Another interesting article discussing success in Social Security privitization.

Social Security Reform in the Times

2004-11-30T22:27:00.000-07:00

I'm shocked to see that the New York Times printed a piece which makes the case for common-sense Social Security reform:

There was no "economic" transition cost, because there is no harm to the gross domestic product from this reform (on the contrary, there is a huge benefit). A completely different issue is how to confront the "cash flow" transition cost to the government of recognizing, and ultimately eliminating, the unfinanced Social Security liability. The implicit debt of the Chilean system in 1980 was about 80 percent of the G.D.P.

We used five "sources" to generate that cash flow: a) one-time long-term government bonds at market rates of interest so the cost was shared with future generations; b) a temporary residual payroll tax; c) privatization of state-owned companies, which increased efficiency, prevented corruption and spread ownership; d) a budget surplus deliberately created before the reform (for many years afterward, we were able to use the need to "finance the transition" as a powerful argument to contain increases in government spending); e) increased tax revenues that resulted from the higher economic growth fueled by the personal retirement account system.

Since the system started on May 1, 1981, the average real return on the personal accounts has been 10 percent a year. The pension funds have now accumulated resources equivalent to 70 percent of gross domestic product, a pool of savings that has helped finance economic growth and spurred the development of liquid long-term domestic capital market. By increasing savings and improving the functioning of both the capital and labor markets, the reform contributed to the doubling of the growth rate of the economy from 1985 to 1997 (from the historic 3 percent to 7.2 percent a year) until the slowdown caused by the government's erroneous response to the Asian crisis.

Personal accounts have become the "third rail" of Chilean politics and the system has been accepted, and even marginally improved, by the three center-left governments of the last 14 years. But it must be said that some labor market problems have increased unemployment and short-term labor contracts, reducing participation in the system and making the future safety net more expensive to maintain.

When the system was inaugurated, one-fourth of the eligible work force signed up in the first month. Today 95 percent of covered workers participate. For Chileans, their retirement accounts represent real property rights. Indeed, the accounts, not risky government promises, are the primary sources of security for retirement, and the typical Chilean worker's main asset is not his used car or even his small house (probably still mortgaged) but the capital in his retirement account.

Since they have a personal stake in the economy, workers cheer the stock market's surges rather than resenting them, and know that bad economic policies will harm retirement benefits. When workers feel that they themselves own a part of their country's wealth, they became participants and supporters of a free market and a free society.

I'd simply add to this my mentioning what isn't said in the article: this was a reform instigated by the government of Augusto Pinochet. It's yet another example of the proud legacy of that great man.

How Hillary Clinton Can Save the Democratic Party and How to Stop Her

2004-11-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

On September 11th what was Hillary Clinton’s greatest liability became the asset which may yet win the Presidency for her and save her party, if only for a few years. Think about it for a second: what word is most associated with Hillary Clinton in the popular imagination? “Bitch” is the first one that comes to mind for me and, apparently, I’m not the only one seeing as a search for those two words returns 161,000 hits in Google. But, it must now be asked: is being seen that way such a bad thing for Hillary?

It occurs to me that Hillary Clinton is almost ideally positioned to run for the Presidency as a sort of American version of Margaret Thatcher. I say this without any great enthusiasm, since I love Maggie and hate Hillary, but I see it as true nonetheless.

Is there anyone in America who doesn’t think that Hillary Rodham Clinton is a cold and tough woman? That’s certainly what I think. Frankly, if given a choice of possible Democrats, I’d rather have her confronting the terrorists than John Kerry, John Edwards, or Howard Dean. John Kerry would probably try and tell the terrorists about Vietnam, John Edwards would probably sue them, and Howard Dean would probably have a panic attack. It says something about the emasculation of the Democratic Party that, in my judgement, Hillary is probably the toughest dude among potential Democratic candidates for President in 2008.

Unless something dramatic changes, the 2004 election marks the ratification of Republican dominance of the American electorate. What’s generally been ignored is this: Bush, in terms of ability as a politician, was about as weak a candidate as the Republicans could have won. George W. Bush is a first-rate CEO, but he’s a terrible press spokesman. Moreover, President Bush suffered through the most virulent attacks launched against any President since Nixon and was plagued by a war which, by Election Day, was a wash at best. It’s worth bearing in mind that, all other things being equal, had there been no Iraq War and had the Republican candidate been Jeb Bush instead of George W. Bush, the odds seem high that the election results would have probably looked like those of 1984, 1972, or 1964.

That is not, of course, to say that the Iraq War wasn’t the right thing to do: it’s just to say that it had political costs. Unique political costs, I’d say, because the American public simply isn’t yet ready to comprehend the full implications of the war. By 2008, either it will have come to accept those implications or be dull to them. Either way, I’d simply note that it’s unlikely that such an issue will strike at Republican fortunes four years from now.

As things stand the Republican Party holds a substantially better hand than the Democrats. The Global War on Terrorism returns national security issues, a field in which Republicans dominate, to the front of the line. Republicans also hold a natural advantage on value issues and most economic issues.

Equally important, but almost totally ignored, is the fact that it appears likely that, in the next few years, President Bush and the Republicans in Congress are likely to enact the most sweeping reforms of entitlement programs since the Great Society and, perhaps, since the New Deal itself.

All of this adds up to a new and long-term Republican majority, especially as it appears increasingly likely that the Republican Party will be successful in its efforts to woo Hispanics.

As I see it, the Democrats have only one chance to win: move to the right of the Republicans on national security, steal their ideas on entitlement reform, and try and turn “values” issues back against the GOP.

The problem with this strategy is this: the base of the Democratic Party would never countenance a right turn on national security. Unless, I think, it was Hillary leading that turn.

From the Democratic perspective the wonderful thing about Hillary Clinton is that she’s already earned the loyalty of the base of the party. A fair chunk of the Democrat Party, especially after three major defeats in a row (and, from the early looks of 2006, probably four in a row) will be ready to march behind anyone named Clinton.

Hillary, with her time on the Armed Services committee, can present herself as an expert on military and defense issues, using any of the many open lines of attack from the right on terrorism. At the same time, she can appeal to the “values voters” of the left who, with the right effort, can be mobilized as well as those of the right can.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I don’t think that Hillary would look silly making tough pronouncements on terror. You and I probably wouldn’t believe her: but other people would. She wouldn’t look absurd proclaiming her intention to kill terrorists as John Edwards and John Kerry both did.

Republicans are wrong to be overconfident about the possibility of facing off against Hillary in 2008. Frankly, I think that she’ll be a hard candidate to beat. In fact, I only see four Republicans that I think would have a good shot of beating her: Rudy Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McCain, and Jeb Bush.

Of these, I think that Rudy is probably too liberal to win the Republican nomination without the support of the entire Republican establishment: something that he’s unlikely to get.

If the Constitution were to be amended, I think that it’s very probable that Arnold Schwarzenegger would easily be elected President, but I don’t think that it’s all that likely to be amended in time. Remember: Arnold still has to get re-elected as Governor in 2006, leaving him very little time to get a Constitutional Amendment pushed through and launch a campaign for 2008.

John McCain remains an attractive candidate but, in my view, by 2008 he’ll probably be too sick and too old to run for President and, in any case, I suspect the media won’t find as much to love about him as they did in 2000 if he runs against Hillary.

That leaves one man, I think, who can be counted on to hold the White House in 2008: Governor John Ellis Bush of Florida, the President’s brother.

To begin, Jeb is simply a better politician than his brother. He’s more articulate and has proven appeal in a key swing state. Better yet: he’s demographically appealing. A Catholic two-term Governor of the nation’s third-largest state (and largest swing state) with a Mexican-American wife and two Hispanic children, were his last name not “Bush” he would, at this point, be the runaway front-runner for the Republican nomination at this point.

Thankfully for us the, “the President’s brother shouldn’t run for President” argument won’t go very far when the other candidate is the previous President’s wife.

Some Great Conservative Movies

2004-11-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

Unlike a great many other conservatives, I don’t hate Hollywood. By my count, I’ve seen something like twenty to thirty movies in the theatre this year and I typically rent at least two movies a week. So, it goes without saying, I’m not really interested in a crusade against the “Homos in Hollywood”, as James Carville once recently put it.

With this in mind, I thought I’d put together a short list of films that I’d recommend to conservatives. I decided to do this after a search for a list of great ‘conservative films’ turned up a list filled mostly with British movies from five or six decades ago.

1) Network:

Even though this movie won four Academy Awards in 1977, it is surprisingly little-remembered today. That’s a shame because, in my opinion, it’s simply one of the greatest movies of all time. In fact, if I was forced to choose, I’d rank it as my favourite movie.

There are two questions here: first, what’s so great about Network? Second: what makes it a great conservative film?

Network is the story of Howard Beale, the fading star anchor of the “UBS” television network in the mid-1970’s. Fired, as a result of his low ratings, he announced on-air that he plans to kill himself. His lunatic statement results in a spike in his ratings, which results in him being put back on their air, where his increasingly-obvious descent into madness seems to draw ever-higher ratings.

The movie features wonderful performances from Peter Finch, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, and Robert Duvall (among others). Together they tell a story of the casual amorality of the world of entertainment.

Dunaway plays a network programming executive who devises a program (“The Mao Tse Tung Hour”) which serves as a sort of proto-reality show, featuring real-life footage of communist terrorists committing crimes combined with a fictional drama show constructed around that footage.

The harder question is the second one: what makes this a great conservative film? Superficially, it would seem to be a left-wing indictment of the evils of corporate America. Except, I don’t think it is.

The people running UBS aren’t evil for the sake of being evil: they’re evil because a decayed cultural and moral environment in America forces them to be in order to be successful. They, like the people who run the Entertainment industry today, don’t provide depraved material because they’re naturally depraved: they provide it because that’s what the free market will bear.

For the real message of the movie, I think, you should look to Beale’s final speech which, I think, comes closest to the essential truth that the creators were trying to convey.

2) MacArthur:

Mostly overlooked both at the time and today, I list MacArthur because, in my view, it’s one of the best portraits of a great American ever put onto film. While it takes a little bit of time to portrays MacArthur’s faults (and, in so doing, gives us the closest-to-life portrayals of both FDR and Harry Truman that I’ve ever seen on film) it’s clearly sympathetic towards the great General.

Played by Gregory Peck in the film, we see MacArthur as the great-but-flawed man that he was. An egotist with results. A hero who was the saviour of many nations.

That the equally-good Patton won such acclaim while MacArthur sank nearly without a trace (I wasn’t even aware of it until I stumbled on an aging copy in the $1.99 bin at a video store one day in the mid-1990’s) is an enduring mystery to me. The best I can come up with is that between the early and late 1970’s there was a hardening of anti-military attitudes in the country which made the public less open to such films.

3) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance:

How a John Ford Western starring both John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart can be so little-known is an absolute mystery to me, especially when the movie is as good as it is.

Stewart plays a novice lawyer from somewhere in the East who emigrates to the West during the fading days of the Old West. A believer in law, he shuns the way of the gun, even after he’s robbed at gunpoint on his way into the town of Shinbone.

John Wayne is an aging gunfighter whose day is clearly passing. Both he and Stewart compete for the affections of the same girl.

I won’t spoil the ending, save to say that I think the film teaches two very conservative lessons. First, Stewart’s character learns the necessity of force. Second, the movie shows a strong deference to settled history and tradition, as opposed to the relentless tearing-down of Gods and icons.

4) It’s a Wonderful Life:

Frank Capra’s film is now justly-celebrated as a classic due to one of those happy accidents of history (because of a mistake in its copyright, television networks were able to play the movie for free, thereby allowing the movie, which was initially a flop, to become traditional Christmas viewing for many families). The story of poor George Bailey, whose despair at the state of his own life brings him to the verge of suicide on Christmas Eve, the values espoused by the film are profoundly conservative.

It’s basically the opposite of virtually every other movie I’ve ever seen which touches upon the topic of personal dreams. The message of the average film is, “do whatever you want, responsibilities be damned.” That isn’t what this movie has to say.

Dutiful George Bailey shirks his dreams in order to do what must be done. The manager of the local trust company, he helps house much of his town. When his father suddenly dies, he puts off going to college in order to keep the Building and Loan running. Instead he sends his brother off to college. When a bank panic hits on his wedding day, he forgoes his honeymoon and uses his money to keep the Building and Loan afloat.

As he stands at the edge of the bridge, an Angel takes Bailey to show him what the world would be like without him. He comes to understand how his doing what had to be done, his keeping his place, has made the world a much better place than it otherwise would have been.

It’s truly an anomaly: a movie which suggests that the road to happiness lies in living up to one’s obligations, rather than running from them.

5) Bob Roberts

:An odd movie to add to a list of conservative films, to be sure. So let me explain.

I have a certain theory of movie-watching. Basically, I view a movie as though it were an account of true events as produced by the mainstream media. In the case of Bob Roberts, since the film is presented as though it were a British documentary, this is easier than in most cases.

For those who don’t know (and since the movie only made $4 million as the box office, I’ll assume that to be most of you) Bob Roberts is Tim Robbins’ story of a folk-singer/investment banker who wins election to the Senate from Pennsylvania as a far-right Republican.

The best reason to watch the movie is the songs which, sadly, were never released in soundtrack form (because Robbins, rightly I think, feared that conservatives would adopt them as their own).

Seriously, read the lyrics to some of the songs, they’re simply a blast.

Are We Back in 1938?

2004-11-24T22:34:00.000-07:00

By the time I finish writing this, it may already be dated. Events are very quickly spinning out of control in Ukraine. At this hour there are already reports of an imminent general strike… and of tanks on the move. Russian forces are reportedly operating with the Ukrainian in uniforms with Ukrainian markings. We may be on the verge of an East-West crisis of the sort not seen since the end of the Cold War.

I, for one, don’t think that it’s coincidental that the Russians made an announcement about the status of their nuclear arsenal last week. My expectation is that, at the present time, President Putin is waiting for some pre-arranged signal. Probably rioting by opposition protestors which spins “out of control” which will be followed by a request for the assistance of Ukraine’s Russian allies in the restoration of order. Then the tanks will come to Kiev like they did into Prague in ’68 and Budapest in ’56. And they won’t go home.

If everything goes according to plan for the Russians the West will probably impose sanctions, but will only do so half-heartedly. After all, not all that many people will care that much about Ukraine. After the elapse of a healthy period of time, there will probably be a referendum in the Ukraine and it’ll vote to reunite itself with Russia.

If this does come to pass: will it remind you of anything? As much as I hate to say it, a single word keeps creeping back into my head: Anschluss.

Quite frankly, the parallels between the political-historical situation in Nazi Germany and Putin’s Russia are becoming too great to ignore.

Both nations were great powers defeated in lengthy and hard conflicts.

Neither nation was conquered at that end of that conflict, but rather suffered from an internal collapse.

Following that collapse, each nation lost a great deal of territory, some of it acquired relatively recently and some of it part of what it would consider to be its ancestral homeland.

Both nations initially enjoyed the benefits of freedom, only to suffer from an extreme economic catastrophe.

As a result of that collapse, each nation turned away from liberal (in the classical sense) political leaders and towards authoritarian ones.

In both cases, the rise of each leader and his consolidation of power was accelerated by a questionable terrorist event (the burning of the Reichstag and the Moscow apartment bombings).

The ascension of both leaders brought a shockingly rapid economic revival.

Both leaders, given power by legitimate democratic means, soon moved to consolidate their power and crush the opposition.

Both nations were able to make common cause with some in the West by being staunchly against another great enemy of the era (Communism and Islam).

Eventually, each nation began to seek to recover the “lost territories” of the last war.

I’ve thought all of this for a long time. During the 1990’s I used to refer to Russia as “Weimar Russia.” Later, in recent years, I’ve become an admirer of President Putin as a result of the strong action he took to bring Russia back and because of his hard-line stand against the Moslem foe. But even I wonder.

I’m not saying that Vladimir Putin is the next Adolf Hitler. There are, of course, substantial differences.

I’ve seen no evidence of the sort of military build-up in Russia which occurred in Nazi Germany. Of course: just because there’s no evidence doesn’t mean that there isn’t one going on.

From the outside looking in, Putin’s regime doesn’t appear to be even 5% as repressive as that of Hitler was and, I have to believe, that, if it was, in this age of the internet and international human rights groups we’d hear about it. But then: how can one be sure?

Thankfully, even if the darkest fears of more than a few come to pass, there’s one thing we can be thankful for: George Walker Bush is no Neville Chamberlain. If this is 1938 again, George Bush can be counted upon to stand for freedom before it is too late to do so.

That means standing against this election fraud, to the point of deploying US forces back into Eastern Europe if that becomes necessary. A line must be drawn across the Russian-Ukrainian border. “This far,” we must tell the Russians, “and no farther.”

Others might counsel appeasement here: there’s already so much going on in the world, from Iran to Iran to North Korea. Doesn’t America have enough to do?

It’s true that we live in a dangerous world, but something else is true as well: Putin isn’t another Hitler, but encourage him and he might turn into one. I’ve no doubt that, if given the choice, he’d like to see the whole of the former Soviet Empire restored. Were I a young Russian today, I would be an arch-nationalist, demanding the peaceful (or not-so-peaceful, whatever) return of Russia’s various “lost territories” from Ukraine, to Latvia, to Kazakhstan. Even in my present station, I’m sympathetic to that position. Russia is a country with a great history, but it needs more than words in dusty books to be a great nation.

The solution here must be to stand with democracy in the Ukraine: not only because it is the right thing to do, but also because it is the practical thing to do. We do not wish to see Russian influence creep back towards Western Europe, an event which would require counter-moves on our part. And while, after the last few years, I wouldn’t much mind if the Russians conquered Germany and France and reduced their respective populations to serfdom, I would mind if they did it to the emerging democracies of Eastern and Central Europe, one of the places where the greatest hope for the future of Western Civilization can be found today.

A stand in the Ukraine will teach President Putin the limits of America’s patience. I, for one, don’t mind if the Russians conquer all of Central Asia again or if they adopt truly Carthaginian tactics to settle matters in Chechnya. But I do care if they destroy freedom in one of our allies.

Why Barack Obama Won’t be President

2004-11-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

On at least a hundred occasions, I’ve heard the election of Barak Obama to the Senate trumpeted as one of the few pieces of “good news” for Democrats in the recent elections. While I’d agree that the take-over of a formerly Republican Senate seat ought to be considered “good news” I’d disagree with those who imbue the arrival on the scene of Senator-elect Barack Obama with greater significance. Despite the fantasies of more than a few Barack Obama will never be the President of the United States.

To begin with, there are some obvious problems. Leaving aside whether a black man would have specific difficulties in being elected President (and, frankly, I think that most of the disadvantages of skin color would be offset by other advantages), I think that someone whose name is one letter removed from “Osama” and whose farther was a Moslem will obviously be starting with some serious disadvantages.

And, while I’m at it, I’ll also ad that there are (unconfirmed) rumours that Obama himself is secretly a Muslim. Now, I don’t believe them but, if Obama ever runs for President, I won’t mind spreading them. There’s also the more serious matter of his father’s reported involvement with Mau Mau terrorists in Kenya, something else which would probably come up in a Presidential campaign.

But let’s leave all of that aside for now: the “Imams for Truth” are least four (and more probably eight or twelve) years away. The real thing which will ensure that Barack Obama will never be President is much simpler than that: he’s an ultra-liberal.

Osama (I mean Obama) is so liberal that he makes John Kerry look like Bob Dornan. In fact, the odds are that he would have ended up being rejected as too liberal for Illinois were it not for the three fortunate occurrences:

1) The bizarre fall of GOP Senate candidate Jack Ryan.

2) The strong (but mostly platitude-filled) speech that Obama gave to the Democratic National Convention.

3) The even more bizarre decision to select Alan Keyes as the Republican candidate for the Senate in Illinois.

Let’s face it: Keyes did literally as badly as a candidate could do. If the Republicans picked a mentally-disabled homosexual named “Adolf Stalin Bin Laden” they probably would have won about as many votes. We should not confuse Republican folly for Democratic strength.

A tough campaign would have outed Barack Obama as a liberal extremist on every issue from abortion to gay marriage to social spending to taxes to the War on Terrorism. When his views are examined, it’s entirely clear that Obama falls into the same category as other far-left Democratic Senators, such as Barbara Boxer of California or Patti Murray of Washington who no rational person considers a possible future candidate for the Presidency.

I think that it’s far more likely that Obama will turn out to be a one-term Senator like Carol Mosley-Braun and be defeated in 2010 than it is that he’ll manage to make his way to the White House.

So why the “Obama for President” surge in some quarters? The reason for this must be obvious: the Democratic benches, especially those of the left-wing of the Democratic Party, are pretty much empty at the present time.

The striking thing about the race for the Republican nomination in 2008 is the depth and diversity of the field. Plausible contenders for the Presidency in 2008 on the Republican side include everything from liberal Republicans like the heroic former Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, to center-right stalwarts like John McCain, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, to reformist conservative Governors like Bill Owens in Colorado, Mitt Romney in Massachusetts, Hayley Barbour in Mississippi and Mark Sanford in South Carolina, to conservative heroes like Kansas Senator Sam Brownback or Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum.

All that, I might add, leaves out the three big names which could potentially shake up the race: Florida Governor Jeb Bush, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Vice President Dick Cheney. Jeb Bush says he won’t run, but he might. Arnold would like to run, but the Constitution says that he can’t, but it might well be changed. Vice President Cheney has said he isn’t running, but you should never believe someone when they say “never” in politics.

Further down the road, Republicans like Representative Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and former Congressmen JC Watts of Oklahoma might someday be contenders for the White House.

Compare this to the Democratic field which consists of a number of largely uninspiring or flawed personalities. New York Senator and former First Lady Hillary Clinton is the obvious front-runner but, beyond her, just who is there?

Former Vermont Governor and certifiable nutcase Howard Dean will probably run again, but I doubt if he’ll even get half as far as he did the last time around. John Kerry might try, but I doubt if the Democrats will make that mistake again. John Edwards, without an office for four years and with an unimpressive Vice Presidential campaign in his past might try, but he’ll fare as well as Joe Lieberman did this year or as Bob Dole did in 1980.

Who else do the Democrats have waiting in the wings? New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who couldn’t even carry his own state for John Kerry even after it went for Al Gore four years ago? Evan Bayh, who seems to come up whenever this is discussed without generating any enthusiasm on the part of anyone?

The Democratic talent pool literally pretty much dries up at this point. Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm might make an attractive candidate, but she can’t run without the Constitution being amended. Al Gore could conceivably run again, but the odds of him being committed to a home for the criminally insane are much higher than those of his winning the nomination. Harold Ford Jr. might be an attractive candidate someday but, to date, he’s won no office higher than US Representative (and, unless he wants to take on Majority Leader Bill Frist or run against a Democratic Governor in a primary in 2006, he won’t have a chance at one for some time) and, in any case, he’ll be thirty-seven years old on the day of the New Hampshire Primary in 2008. Mark Warner has been mentioned by a few people, but a single term as the tax-raising Governor of Virginia does not make someone a contender for the Presidency.

So it’s little wonder that some Democrats have eager embraced Obama: they’re running out of options. A drowning man will hold onto anything.

2004-11-19T21:48:00.000-07:00

Those not paying attention to the present happenings in the Ivory Coast are, to say the least, a large majority. This does not mean, however, that these events are insignificant or undeserving of our attention.

In truth, the ongoing violence in the Ivory Coast offers the United States an excellent chance to fight against the Islamic takeover of an old friend of the West, a chance to punish France for its consistent meddling in the affairs of its former colonies, and a chance to make the French realize the full cost of standing alongside the enemies of the Untied States.

Let’s briefly review the history of the Ivory Coast. A French colony up until 1960, it has traditionally been Western-aligned and relatively free. In recent years, however, the nation has faced increasing chaos. In 1999 the democratically-elected government was overthrown in a coup which ended a year later after a popular revolt following rigged election installed Laurent Gbagbo as the nation’s President.

In 2002 a rebellion began, centered in the largely-Islamic northern portion of the country. This rebellion is supported by the predominantly Moslem nation of Burkina Faso. One of the factors most commonly cited as a cause of this rebellion is the decision of the government of the Ivory Coast to impose laws requiring that both parents of a Presidential candidate be born within the country. This law is considered particularly offensive by the Moslems within the north because they (or at least their parents) tend to originate from other nations.

Late in 2002 the French became deeply involved in the settling of the crisis. They imposed a “peace agreement” upon President Gbagbo which forced him into a “power sharing” agreement with the rebels and left them in control of a large portion of the country. Their intervention (and the subsequent involvement of the UN) was objectively in favor of the rebels for the simple reason that, in the face of any rebellion, using outside force in order to force a settlement is an action which legitimizes such a movement.

Given that the actual population of the Ivory Coast, if you include foreigners living within the borders of the country, is majority-Islamic, it seems natural to assume that, if the rebels eventually get their way and President Gbagbo is removed and nationality laws are modified that the Ivory Coast will be drowned by the forward-rushing Islamic tide.

Virtually all stories I’ve seen have played down (or failed entirely to mention) the role of Islam in this or the obvious fact that France’s real aim in the Ivory Coast is not to simply maintain a peace agreement, but rather to install an (Islamic) government which suits its own needs.

It’s essential that we face the fact that, even if Islam itself is not an enemy of Western Civilization (a proposition which I do entirely endorse), that the advance of Islam and the installation of pro-Islamic governments anywhere upon the Earth is not in the interests of the United States or, for that matter, that of all free and moral men.

President Gbagbo and the present government of the Ivory Coast deserve our support both because they are the legitimately elected government of that country, but also because they stand against our enemies. If an Islamic government, even a relatively benign one, is installed in the Ivory Coast there can be little doubt that it will quickly become a haven for terrorists and other Islamists.

So: what is to be done? Obviously it would be less than desirable to send US troops to fight the rebels (and possibly the French). Leaving aside the political difficulties of such a move, it isn’t really necessary.

President Gbagbo needs two things to defeat the rebellion: money and weapons. A few hundred million dollars can go a long way in Africa. Such aid could even be disguised as “humanitarian aid” upon which a not-very-vigilant watch is kept.

The second thing is a little more difficult. To begin, there’s a UN Security Council resolution banning the shipment of weapons to belligerents in the Ivory Coast. While it is true that UN Security Resolutions have about as much practical effect as the resolutions of the Oxford Union, it does mean that we probably shouldn’t ship those weapons overtly.

Instead, I propose, the US Government should undertake a covert operation to transfer a few thousand tons of captured Iraqi weapons to the government of the Ivory Coast with the assistance of a number of third parties. In addition to the weapons which will be necessary for the defeat of the rebels, such shipments should also include SA-7 or SA-14 shoulder-fired missiles for use by the government in case the French get any more ideas about deciding to use their Air Force inappropriately. A few crates of anti-tank missiles, should the French army stand in the way of any offensive to crush the rebels, might be a good idea as well.

Finally, if increased violence forces the UN mission out of the country, the US might consider lending air support to an offensive designed to crush the northern rebels. The very sight of a Navy F/A-18 might be enough to send a lot of the people fighting on the rebel side into retreat.

There is, of course, one large risk inherent in this proposed strategy: we might end by inadvertently in confrontation with France that could compel their surrender and leave us with the challenge of managing the EU.

Is Proliferation the Solution in North Korea?

2004-11-17T09:04:00.000-07:00

Just what is to be done about North Korea? During the Presidential campaign President Bush advocated the continuation of the present multilateral talks. John Kerry called for direct talks between the US and the DPRK. In other words: a choice between endless (and pointless) talk and bribery. Neither solution is satisfactory. But what else is there?

The military options run the range between the dangerous and the insane. Given that North Korea possesses long-range missiles, a nuclear arsenal, and a massive collection of artillery pointed at a modern metropolis (Seoul) the only real military option would be to attack them with sudden and overwhelming force, probably including the use of tactical nuclear weapons. This is a sub-ideal option.

Obviously the other option would be some sort of operation to assassinate Kim Jong Il. This is also a dangerous option for several reasons. The first is the obvious fact that, if we shoot and miss the odds are rather high that Kim John Il will shoot right back. The second, of course, is the concern that we just don’t know who would get the reigns after him. They, after all, might even be crazier than him.

Military force and assassination both have to remain on the table as options, but they can’t be our primary means for resolving this crisis. More than anything else, North Korea demonstrates the very real perils of allowing our enemies to become nuclear powers: once they’ve got those nukes ready for launch, we have to treat them differently.

So what are our options? A prolonged stand-off? Hopelessly dangerous military strikes? A risky assassination?

I don’t consider it desirable that American troops should spend the next five decades sitting within range of a Madman (and then a Madman’s son’s) nuclear bombs. Nor do I think that there’s any negotiated way out of this: our best option is to sit back and hope that the Korean regime collapses in on itself.

So, what are we to do to assure peace and security in the meantime? I have a one word answer: proliferate.

That’s right: so far as I can tell, the best solution to nuclear proliferation is what I like to call “Positive Proliferation.” So long as the United States treats all potential nuclear states equally it will find itself practically obligated to resist every third-rate power which seeks nuclear weapons for regional or national reasons.

Look at who North Korea’s neighbours are: Japan, South Korea, China, and Russia. Does anyone seriously think that those four countries aren’t capable of handling the problem on their own?

South Korea and Japan, the two nations to which North Korea poses the most serious threat, are both not nuclear powers at the moment. I see no real reason why this state of affairs should be perpetuated: let both of those nations become nuclear powers in order to change the balance of power in Asia. Let both of them deal with the North Korean problem.

In fact, it might not even take the acquisition of nuclear weapons by those nations to actually solve the problem. China very much does not wish to see the emergence of a nuclear Japan. Seriously suggest to them that the Japanese are planning to acquire nuclear weapons and they might well move on their own to end the reign of Kim Jong Il.

But the real issue at hand is that of North Korea. This urgent problem must be acted upon and such action must come with a shocking rapidity. The longer we wait the older and crazier Kim Jong Il gets and the more nuclear weapons he controls. Pen him in now and let others deal with the problem.

We cannot have an unconditional loathing for the bomb. While they are frightening, nuclear weapons can have their uses. One of those uses is the fact that they tend to have a stabilizing effect on any situation. Put nukes in the hands of Japan and South Korea and, at the very minimum, we are relieved of the difficult problem of being expected to use American nuclear weapons to guarantee the safety of nations that are more than capable of taking care of themselves.

Better yet, this solution might solve problems outside of Korea. Japan has for far too long been constrained by the bitter memories of the Second World War and the pacifist constitution and ideas imposed upon her in the years after that war. Japan will never again be a threat to the United States. So let us then let the sun rise again and see that nation restored to its former greatness.

China is rising and someday we shall have to face the threat that she poses to American power. What better way to do this than by truly getting the Japanese back into the fight? Japan’s beaten China and Korea before. It can do it again, if the need comes.

Despite the present focus on terrorism, the hard truth is that the greatest foreign policy challenges of this century are likely to emanate from Asia. And that challenge too can be summed up in a single word: China.

The sooner we can get our Asian policy turned away from dealing with a dumb little country like North Korea and focused instead on the inevitable confrontation with the emerging Chinese menace, the better.

Enlightenment

2004-11-15T11:01:00.000-07:00

The election, it would seem, has led to the useful enlightenment of at least one individual.

Bill Clinton Cannot be Allowed to Become the Secretary-General

2004-11-14T22:42:00.000-07:00

A quick note: Updates may be somewhat sluggish this week, as, unlike Mr. Yoshida, I have to deal with the real world.

Rumors have been spreading for some time that former President Clinton wishes to become the Secretary-General of the United Nations. According to a recent UPI report the former President, “definitely wants to do it.” We must stop him. Letting Bill Clinton become Secretary-General would be much worse than letting John Kerry become the President.

Right now the UN is about where it should be: mostly ignored and generally despised. Certainly, only a very few deluded individuals think of it as they once did: as an embryonic world government. However, if Clinton were to be placed in charge, I think that would rapidly change.

Think about it for a second: what kind of treatment would Secretary-General Clinton get from the world media? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that they would, the moment he took office, begin to treat him as though he were the President of the world.

It’s a disaster waiting to happen. Clinton knows a thing or two about PR. The scary thing to think about is this: he has the people around him with the skills to make it happen.

Once Clinton gains that office, everything changes. I don’t find it at all hard to imagine Secretary-General Clinton requesting world-wide television time to address the world from the UN Headquarters in New York City and getting it. It doesn’t seem at all difficult to imagine the Secretary-General’s address to the UN General Assembly transformed into the equivalent of a State of the Union address.

So: what is to be done? I propose a two track approach.

First: we must lay down a framework within which to oppose Clinton if the day should come when a push for him comes. This means laying out reasonable arguments which, to the public, do not sound as though they’re being devised by people who are getting ready to hand you a pamphlet about the threat posted by the Zionist Occupational Government.

We know how the Democrats will cast any effort to oppose the selection of Clinton: they’ll claim that it’s a manifestation of Republican partisanship and, as they tend to do, all sorts of ‘moderate’ Republicans looking to get a kind word from the New York Times will be more than happy to take a contrarian position and provide full support for Clinton.

Arguments about personal morality cannot be used to sink Clinton because the people are already tired of them. And, in truth, it won’t fly if we attempt to argue against him on partisan lines because, first, Clinton remains very popular at home and, second, it will be the rest of the world seeking to put him into power.

So, what sort of arguments are we to make against this appointment? We must, I think argue, very carefully, upon the grounds of national sovereignty. This will be a delicate minefield to walk, since a very fine line separates ideas which are seen as legitimate and those that are seen as black helicopter talk: but it is an area we manoeuvre in nonetheless.

We should not argue that the United Nations has ambitions to take over the United States, but rather this is could, under Clinton’s leadership, start to act as a sort of globalized version of the European Union (at least in the First World). We need to explain the sort of social agenda advocated by the United Nations and which could, conceivably, be imposed upon the United States by treaty and by “international law.” In particular, we need to emphasize that the United Nations has plans to tax Americans and that, with Clinton in there, it might actually get done.

Worse come to worse, President Bush can simply use US influence over the UN to block any such appointment. But that solution is, to say the very least, sub-ideal.

The second track is to give former President Clinton something else to do. Whatever may be said about his personal conduct (and there is a very great deal which may be said), there is no denying the fact that he’s an intelligent and capable man who could be usefully put to work for the sake of the country.

One way to ensure that he doesn’t take the United Nations posting would be simply to get him out of the way by giving him some other job that he’d like and in which he could creditably serve the country.

The obvious area where these objectives could be achieved is in the Middle East. Clinton could form a sort of Good Cop/Bad Cop team with President Bush. We could make Clinton the “Special Envoy for Democratic Reform” and dispatch him to various Middle Eastern regimes to tell their leaders, in all frankness, “if you don’t reform, then someone is going to make you reform.”

During this process he could also be sent into the Israeli-Palestinian morass, where the need for some action now seems to be evident. Not only would this tie up President Clinton for years, but he might also get some useful work done.

The foundation of peace did not exist when Clinton was the President. The Palestinians were ascendant, the Israelis weak and a murderous thug was in command among the Palestinians. Now, everything has changed. The Palestinian murder machine has been shattered. Israel is increasing strong and secure behind its new defenses. Israel has won its victory against terror.

While my preferred solution remains the expulsion of the Palestinians from the territories, even I recognize that such a thing is not likely to come to pass. Send in Clinton and perhaps he can do some good. Or, just as good, he can achieve nothing but be out of our hair for a few years and safely as far away from the UN in New York as possible.

I warn you: if Clinton is allowed to become Secretary-General it will be a disaster for our civilization. He’ll made that damned place visible and more relevant.

It can’t be allowed.

The State of Our Culture: Television and The Way Things Ought to Be

2004-11-12T23:37:00.000-07:00

To borrow moderately from Gerald Ford, I think it would be fair to describe the state of our culture today as “not good.” Popular movies, music, books, and television are all agents of cultural destruction. They spread pernicious notions about our history and our government. By example, they erode our moral values.

I think it’s significant to remember the whole Dan Quayle/Murphy Brown “scandal” of 1992. For those who don’t remember, this is basically what happened. Vice President Quayle (a man who never caught a break if there ever was one) criticized the television program Murphy Brown on the not-unreasonable basis that, by depicting the title character as happily having a child out of wedlock, it was contributing to a general moral decline and, worse, it was unrealistically suggesting that single motherhood was an easy thing. Shortly thereafter, all of the legions of post-modern moralists descended upon the Vice President for his insensitivity and, in essence, turned the whole thing into a gigantic joke.

What I find most notable about the whole thing is this: it was only twelve years ago. It was recent enough that I can remember following the story. Consider that for a second. Think about just how much has changed in so short a period of time. A female character having a child out of wedlock on television today is a totally unremarkable event. As a matter of fact, one of the few major television shows with what might be characterized as a strong family message, The Gilmore Girls, revolves around a character who had a child while both unmarried and a teenager. This fact is treated simply as a matter of course and as, other than her relative youth, entirely unremarkable. Where Vice President Quayle was mostly attacked by the left in 1992, if Vice President Cheney made such remarks today he would be attacked by everybody.

Television matters. It’s an agent of change in our society. Virtually everyone in the country watches television and more people than not watch several hours of the stuff a day. In the absence of other institutions which once defined the realms of personal behavior (most notably the Church- but also other traditional community groups, which were once much stronger) is has become the central regulator of our values.

Don’t believe me? Well, just watch. Frankly, I’m quite confident that if NBC were to air a pro-incest sitcom which turned into a mega-hit (All in the Family: 2004?), it wouldn’t be more than two months before newspaper op-ed pages started filling with columns with titles like “Incest is the Best” and New York Times editorials with titles like “Individual Choice.” I have no doubt at all that the rise in support for homosexuality can be directly linked to the amount of pro-gay content on TV (rather than the amount of pro-gay content on TV linked to popular support for homosexuality).

This definitively does not mean that the people themselves approve of homosexuality or of any of this rest of this. A Gallup Poll in May of 2003 showed that 46% of adults think that having a baby outside of marriage is morally wrong. The same poll said that 52% of people think that homosexual behavior is immoral.

When people bother to ask (and they often don’t, because they don’t know what the answers will be) they find that a significant minority thinks that homosexual acts themselves ought to be illegal. One 2003 Quinnipiac survey found that 35% of Pennsylvanians feel that way. The same level of opposition was found in a national Gallup survey from the same time period.

So: if more than half of the people think that gay behavior is immoral, if a third want it to be illegal, and if roughly half of all people think that it’s immoral to have a child out of wedlock: why aren’t these views being reflected on our televisions screens?

Why do people sit by as their culture is transformed into something alien to them? It’s simple: they’re scared. They don’t see the polling data that I and others see. They only know what they know. They only see what they see spewing from television and on movie screens and in the newspapers. So they think that they’re alone. They think that they’re the only ones that feel that way. Thus it is that those who would normally set the boundaries of what is acceptable in civil society stand aside and thereby are those who would destroy all limits given a licence to advance their cause and ennobled by the incorrect belief that they are in the majority.

When I raised the example of incest above, it wouldn’t be accepted because most people would approve of it. It would be accepted because people who didn’t approve would be too frightened of the stabs of the pseudo-moral majority to speak. It’s just the same with homosexuality: it isn’t that more people suddenly want to engage in gay acts than did decades ago (though, I suppose, that might be a factor as well in some cases) it’s that they feel free to do so because those who would normally condemn them are too afraid to do so openly. People are afraid to defend the borders of our culture because they believe that they would be alone in doing so.

Forget the politics of it: there’s a business opportunity here. There’s money to be made here. Look at how quickly the Fox News Channel and Rush Limbaugh came to dominate their respective fields. In both cases it was for a simple reason. People who had previously been forced to accept the products of a cultural monopoly heard something new and, on hearing it, had a single thought: “this is what I think, but am afraid to say.”

That, in fact, is the most common e-mail comment I get (well, save for, “I hope you die of Ebola” or some variation on that theme). It’s exactly how other Rush fans that I speak to describe the moment of revelation. It was how I felt the moment I started reading a friend’s copy of The Way Things Ought to Be sitting in a sixth-grade classroom at lunch on a rainy day in 1994. From that moment on, I knew that I was a conservative and a Republican and that I’d be one for life. Better than that (at least from Rush’s perspective) I also knew that I was going to go out that afternoon and use some of the money I earned delivering newspapers to buy a copy of See, I Told You So and that soon I’d be staying up until Midnight to watch Rush’s television show on a Fox affiliate out of Seattle and that I’d be finely tuning a portable radio to, throughout the day, listen to a static-filled version of his show as played on a radio station in distant Bellingham.

I don’t think that anyone can deny that a conservative entertainment television network would be financially lucrative. Look at the success of The Passion of the Christ. People lined up to watch that movie not only because they wanted to see the story of Jesus Christ and not only because Mel Gibson was involved, but because seeing the movie was an act of cultural affirmation and solidarity. People went to see the movie because, in so doing, they wanted to show what side of the culture war they were on.

The fact that nearly a year has passed without another studio trying to follow up on that says something. So does the fact that no studio has seriously attempted to produce a pro-War on Terror film. It says that the present bosses of Hollywood care more about ideology than they care about money. Fine. That’s their prerogative.

But we have our rights as well. We’ve got room to make money and to promote the things that, in our hearts, all decent men know to be right.

In the days to come, I’m going to talk more about the need for a conservative counter-culture as part of an all out effort to reduce and destroy the last real bastions of left-wing control in this country.

We’ve got a good power base in half of the institutions which matter: the Federal Government, the State Governments, and the Military. Now we need to take back the universities, the television networks, the newspapers, and the movie studios. The time is ripe and our cause is just. Deus vult.