Friday's Thoughts: Debates Round-up, Christmas Songs, and Star Wars

By Kit

My last post before Christmas. What a year its been, trying to consistently write a weekly post for this site. It's been difficult, especially with schoolwork but I'm glad for the positive responses I've gotten from you folks.

Now, let's get on with the show.

Tuesday's Debate We had a debate this week. The expected (and possibly hoped for) Trump/Cruz clash did not occur. Cruz deflected from attacking Trump and Trump, interestingly, did likewise. Instead the big clashes were Bush/Trump and, the highlights for me, Cruz/Rubio.

So let's score the Top 8 Candidates.

Trump: Trump was Trump. Though slightly less than usual but still Trump with outlandish calls to kill the families of terrorists (WTF?!) and issuing proposals that, as Jon Gabriel of Ricochet once pointed out, nearly always seem to involve bigger government. He is a populist strongman with a nationalist streak in the vein of Huey Long.

He is also a clueless clown, flubbing a question on the nuclear triad. True, I didn’t know what it was but… I am not running for President of the United States.

However, he did gain a few points with me by promising not to run as an independent. For now, at least. He made He was at zero before (if not in the negatives) so it was not a huge bump. He is still at the bottom for me.

Cruz: Did ok but he made a flap, possibly fatal one (but fatal missteps are declared far more often than they occur) when he said he never supported legalization of illegals when in fact in 2013 he proposed a bill to do just that. He claims it was a poison pill but he advocated on several networks, including for some time after it failed. National Review is giving him hell on this, and, to a certain extent, Fox News as well, while his supporters are trying to craft him as some kind of Machiavellian genius —who lies to stop bills he doesn’t like.

Carson: Still not ready for primetime. Should be running for Congress. Next!

Rubio: My pick as “winner”, even though there really was not a standout winner. But I found myself leaning back to him. He took on an attack on immigration and handled it well. And, no, he did not “dodge” the immigration question, unless dodging means giving a clear and well-crafted answer that clearly outlines a position you don't like in a possibly appealing way. You can say you don't trust him, you can say you don't like his answer, but it was not evasive.

I have some problems with him, true, but he never seems off his game. He has handled himself incredibly well in the debates. He always knows his stuff. That requires some homework. In this primary system, that is sadly a huge plus. He also looked a bit older than in previous debates, where he unfortunately had a Chairman of the College Republicans look to him.

Christie: Rubbed me the wrong way. His butting in during the Rubio/Cruz debate on NSA and attacking them for “just discussing” instead of making decisions shad, to me at least, a stench of pro-executive, anti-legislature strongman Mussoliniism to it. Though it appears to have played well with most people.

Carly: Ok. Her campaign for VP continues apace. Her failed attempt to pull a Christie during one of the Rubio/Cruz clashes was rather sad.

Jeb: Had his best night but that is not saying much considering how poor his nights have been so far.

Kasich: Who? Oh, right, him. He was… there.

He kind of seemed like the Larry Gillmore of the night. He was there.

Any thoughts?


Bad Christmas Songs

First, my least favorite: “Last Christmas”, “Christmas Shoes”, “Grandma Got Run over by a Reinder”, and “Do They Know It’s Christmas” are at the top of my hate list. “Christmas Shoes” is probably my least loathed of them because I rarely heard it but, yeah, its awful. “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” is annoying and “Do They Know Its Christmas” is “LOOK AT HOW CARING WE ARE” twaddle. At least “Last Christmas” has a cheesy, 80s so-bad-its-good vibe to it, even if it is annoying.

Good songs? Pretty much any of the classics and the hymns. There are some mediocrities such as “Rock a-Round the Clock” and “All I Want For Christmas” but for the most part this season is full of good songs; “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, “Jingle Bells”, “Silver Bells”, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”,

Your favorites? Least favorites?

Star Wars

Well Star Wars premieres tonight, I plan to see it tomorrow. Anyone who dares spoil it for me will be force-choked. But not to death. No, for death they will be tossed bound and gagged into a Sarlacc pit to be digested over the course of a thousand years.

Merry Christmas.

[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

Kit's Thoughts: Foreign Affairs and Some Books

by Kit

I didn't have anything planned today (schoolwork) so instead I am going to do another foreign affairs round-up. Call it "An Occasional Look at the Mess Obama Has Gotten America Into Around the World with Some Stuff on Books."

The title needs work. So, let's start with…


Yemen

As you might be aware Yemen has undergone quite a lot in recent months. The Iranian-backed Houthis shot their way into the capital city and seized the parliament building, declaring a new government. The US withdrew its personnel from the area. The situation has deteriorated to the point where a UN official declared Yemen to be "on the edge of civil war."

Such a statement is, of course, false. Saying a country is "on the edge of civil war" implies it is not already in a civil war. It is like saying after the Battle of Bull Run that the United States was "on the edge of civil war." The civil war has already begun.

And it is becoming a proxy war between the Saudi-backed Sunni fighters and the Iran-backed Shiite Houthis as Saudi Arabia is now not only launching air strikes at Houthi targets inside Yemen, but massing troops at its border. The US, under Obama's leadership (presumably), is right now backing the Saudis. Of course, this means we are probably backing by proxy a group quacks with a philosophy close to ISIS but the alternative is a group of quacks bound to Iran, so it's a bit of a lose-lose right now unless we could set up a functioning, secular(-ish) government. But a Saudi-backed government in Yemen is preferable to an Iranian-backed government in Yemen.

Now Yemen is no stranger to proxy wars. During the 1960s it was home to a proxy war between the Saudi-backed Royalists and the Republicans backed-up by Nasser's Egypt, who sent troops to the country in what historian Michael B. Oren called, "an entanglement so futile and fierce that the imminent Vietnam War could have easily been dubbed America's Yemen." Guerrilla warfare and all the hallmarks of nasty, third-world fighting; chemical warfare, villages wiped out, brutal torture of prisoners, etcetera.

Now, to my knowledge neither the Saudis nor the Houthis have used chemical weapons —yet. Neither party may want the bad press. Houthis gassing Sunnis may create some bad press for Iran as well as some uncomfortable questions as to how they attained those chemical weapons, which would make a US-Iran deal harder for Obama. Of course, seeing as how things worked out for Assad when he crossed Obama's red line by launching a chemical attack they might decide, "Hey, why not?" The Saudis gassing Shiites would definitely throw a wrench into the US-Saudi relationship but given how unpredictable Obama has been in the realm of foreign affairs they too might decide, "Hey, why not?"

Oh, I should mention that this country, which is the Lebanon of the Arab peninsula, was previously called a "model" of Obama's counter-terrorism policy by the White House. A bit embarrassing.

Iraq

US launched airstrikes on Tikrit to support an Iraqi offensive. Things took an interesting turn of events when the Shiite militias backed off with the US claiming we asked them to hold off during the air strikes but some of the militia fighters claimed they held off to protest US involvement, with one militia spokesman* saying, "We are able to conclude the battle ourselves but the US came to usurp our victory." I got nothing.

*Spokesman? Do these Iraqi militias have PR departments, now?

Ukraine

Still a mess. But things took a turn for the bizarre (and comical) when the Speaker of the Chechen Parliament attempted a pathetic version of the Zimmerman Telegram vowed to send arms to Mexico if the US sent weapons to Ukraine in order to help Mexico regain the lands it lost in the Mexican-American War.

You read that right. And the story appears on Newsweek, Radio Free Europe, and Moscow Times so I think this story is legit. And pathetic.

By the way, we should be sending arms to Ukraine. Or something more than night vision goggles.

In Sum

Now, not all of this is necessarily Obama's fault. Yemen would be a basket case even without Obama, it has been that way for decades. But between his "reset" with Russia and his refusal to do anything when Assad drove a steam-roller over the red line and everything else it is safe to say that if Obama were following different policies towards Russia, the Middle East, and everywhere else half the stuff I described would be nowhere near as bad as it is.

And the thing about foreign policy is that mistakes cost lives, often in the thousands. The conflicts in Iraq and Ukraine have each cost several thousand human lives, many of them civilian. And they will continue to cost lives throughout the decade, maybe beyond. Such is the cost of incompetence.

Books

How about something cheerier?

Read Max Boot's most recent book, Invisible Armies, an excellent history of terrorism and guerrilla warfare going back to the days of Persia and Rome. He points out that (1) Guerrilla, or irregular, warfare is not "asian" and terrorism is not modern but is instead the "warfare of the weak" practiced by those unable to field conventional armies be they indigenous nomads, mid-20th century nationalists in Vietnam, or bomb-throwing anarchists during the fin de siècle and (2) they are not impossible to defeat. Some succeed like the Viet Cong in the 1960s-70s and the Ku Klux Klan in the 1870s but most fail. They are doing slightly better in the modern day but still have trouble. Some, like FARC, have spent decades fighting for their goal but are no closer to it than the day they launched their war.

I am now reading The Conservatarian Manifesto by Charles C.W. Cooke, a British-American writer at National Review. The book was written with a certain group of people in mind, people whom he said "feel like libertarians when they are with conservatives and conservatives when with libertarians," some of whom have begun calling themselves "conservatarians." An obvious portmanteau of "conservative" and "libertarian." So far it is a pretty good book but I am only on chapter 3, about federalism, so I have quite a ways to go. I will tell you about it when I finish.

Two other books I have read recently:

(1) Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas by Jonah Goldberg: This one is very much like his Liberal Fascism but, whereas Liberal Fascism was an (entirely successful) attempt to point out the ties between fascism and modern progressivism, Tyranny of Clichés is a history of liberal evasions and word games such as "only being interested in what works," "violence never solves anything," and others, including stuff about the Catholic Church and "Social Justice".

(2) Seven Deadly Virtues: 18 Conservative Writers on Why the Virtuous Life is Funny as Hell edited by Jonathan V. Last: This one is more in line with the traditionalist strain of conservative writing rather than the Classical Liberal strain so the result is sometimes pessimistic but most of the time the writers are so good at laying out the case for classical, old time virtues and values such as 7 Cardinal Virtues of Prudence, Justice, Courage, Temperance, Hope, Charity, and Faith as well as some other small but still important virtues such as Chastity, Forbearance, and Perseverance. Writers include Jonah Goldberg, Rob Long, P.J. O'Rourke, and, writing the last essay, on Perseverance, Christopher Buckley, who shows he has at least a modicum of his old man's talent with the pen. I highly suggest it, if only for that essay.

So, there it is. Discuss this or whatever you wish. The events around the world I've described, the ever-hastening decline of Pax Americana, or some book you've recently read. This is a sort-of open thread.

Discuss Away!

[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

Kit's Thoughts: Depressing Thoughts

by Kit

The following, as the title indicates, is going to be depressing. It is also a bit of a rambling collection of thoughts rather than a coherent thought. It is really a collection of desultory thoughts I've had looking at the current political and cultural landscape. 

The idea of America is dead, or is dying. It has been replaced with identity politics, which is antithetical to America.

Neither side really seems to believe in America anymore.

And the Right has happily gone along with it, replacing Reagan-esque American idealism with the culture war identity politics of Pat Buchanan.

The Right's adoration of the Greats and now subtle embrace of the Boomers while sneering at X-ers and Millennials is just another form of identity politics. Adding to this, they have embraced white identity politics, as well. Pandering to racist union workers in Pennsylvania.

This has also caused conservatives to abandon making a case for immigration, embracing instead the idea espoused in the title of Mark Krikorian's book (emphasis mine), The Case Against Immigration: Legal and Illegal. Quixotically, they still wonder why they can no longer win among Cubans and Koreans.

Also, in 2016 they will go down in flames because this spring the Supreme Court will issue a ruling legalizing Gay Marriage throughout the land causing the Republican Party to face pressure from the Religious Right demanding they treat this as an "illegal and unconstitutional ruling" (to quote one writer). In fact, they already are.

Knowing the GOP, especially Boehner, they will fold like a cheap suit. And in 2016 they will have in their platform a proposal for a federal marriage amendment and will run hard on it as their main platform. And lose.

They know better than to write up an actual platform of policies (a.k.a., goals), which would likely involve compromises to reality. Which would offend the talk-radio crowd.

Our culture? It is saturated with cynicism and self-loathing. We no longer look for the mysterious joys and simple pleasures. Instead, our culture teaches people to aspire to be the most degraded among us. Rap and country teaches Americans (in the South, at least) to emulate the ghetto and white trash cultures.

In short, America died the moment Larry the Cable Guy replaced Norman Rockwell as the artistic representation of Middle America, "America" became "'Merikuh!", and a patriotic American citizen ceased to be a good husband, father, and citizen and instead became a fat guy with a beer gut and shotgun. Patriotism is a joke even among those who call themselves patriotic.

Can it be saved? Some days I'm not so sure. Like a heroin addict in his final days day America seems to prefer, nay, relish injecting more poison into its last remaining veins.

** I've more or less snapped out of the funk due to some help from the excellent movie The Kingsman. It is surprising what a bizarre blend of British 1960s spy-fi and Tarantino-style action can do.

[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

Kit's Thoughts: Why Jeb Bush is Not Wooing the "Base"

by Kit

Conservative writers John Nolte and Jonah Goldberg recently bemoaned, rather understandably, on twitter that while Mitt Romney at least tried to appeal to the conservative “base” Jeb Bush seems to show little to no desire to do so.

The better question would be, “Why would Jeb Bush want to appeal to the base?”

Like with Romney in the 2012 primaries, the base has already decided they hated him. Throughout the spring they attacked Governor Romney with an almost unparalleled sanguinolent fury. Anyone who lacked their required level of hatred for Romney was attacked for being an establishment, Rockefeller-Republican RINO already in the tank (and maybe on the dole!) for Romney. One example was Jonah Goldberg, who, though critic of Romney, failed to blast the candidate in every column as the death of conservatism and the Republican Party and was therefore branded as a RINO squish. An idiotic accusation considering this was the man who wrote Liberal Fascism and had attacked Bush’s spending binges… in 2003.

They only calmed down (somewhat) in the summer when Santorum and Gingrich dropped out, making Romney the definite nominee. They weren’t going to support Ron Paul even if hell froze over. So they (begrudgingly) gave their (reluctant) backing to Romney as he turned his sights towards Obama, though he still had to deal with attacks from the Ron Paul-wing of the GOP and the base still snipping at his heels, making sure he stayed within the dogma of the Talk-Radio Orthodoxy. The Party put out a platform bending over backwards to appeal to the Religious Right. For example, it called for a legal crackdowns on pornography (not child, adult). All while some, especially in the Religious Right, defended brain-dead quacks like Todd Akin.

And when he lost? Despite Romney’s gyrations and prostrations they attacked him for abandoning conservatism and failing to stick to conservative principles and running as a moderate. Romney was never pure enough for them and nothing he did would appease them, short of handing the nomination over to someone like Rick Santorum. They only warmed to him when he was seen as the anti-Jeb bush.

So, with this in mind, why would Jeb Bush want to appeal to a group of people who, as he well knows, already hate his guts, will never be satisfied by any level of contrition on his part, and might even undermine his general election campaign?

Heck, as Rick Perry learned, being a “conservative” candidate is no protection as they might still tear into your background looking for some spit of evidence that you are secretly a RINO squish. They were starting to do this to Scott Walker until the left started ragging him about his lack of a Bachelor’s Degree.

So, in their zeal to ensure that only the most pure of purest candidates is elected we have an election season where the most likely candidate knows that in order to win he must aim for the center and hope the crushing weight of inevitability and his army of donors carries him across the finish line. After all of the talk radio set’s inquisitorial vetting of any candidate they may now have created first candidate to run in the Rockefeller Republican mold in 40 years.

Congratulations.

[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

Kit's Thoughts: ISIS, Like the Nazis over 70 Years Ago, Deserves to be Mocked

by Kit

This past week Saturday Night Live did a sketch referencing a heartwarming Toyota commercial featuring Dakota Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey) joining ISIS. Here it is, just under 2 minutes: Link.

Twitter went mad.

The primary complaints were featured on Fox and Friends* with Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who seemed to be shaking and on the verge of tears, attacking Saturday Night Live for daring to mock a heartwarming Toyota commercial about a girl and her father remembering the past 18 years she spent growing up as he drives her to the airport where she is joining the military at a time when many soldiers have given their lives in the defense of their country and come home in caskets and for being “insensitive” when ISIS is responsible for so much evil.

Me? I liked it.

First, the use of the Toyota ad. As Andy Levy explained on Red Eye. “Everything except the punchline was set up for the punchline”. The reason for the use of the Toyota ad was to take a recent, popular commercial that a lot of people recognize, build things up, over-playing it slightly so the audience does not get too invested in it, before hitting them —WHAM!— with the reveal that she is going not to college, not to the army, but joining a violent, murdering, raping terrorist group. It is surprising and also ridiculous because the idea of very white Dakota Johnson joining ISIS is ridiculous. So, using that ad was fair because copying the ad allows them to set things up for a shocking (and funny) punchline.

Now, what about the criticism that doing the sketch when ISIS has beheaded Americans, burned POWs alive, and sold young girls into sexual slavery. Surely ISIS is “no laughing matter” and doing a comedy sketch about them at this time is clearly in “poor taste!”

Let me respond to that question by giving you a brief history lesson.

Though the years 1942 and 1943 would later be seen as the year in which the fortunes for the allies changed from a string of defeats to a string of victories in 1942 with the Battles of Stalingrad, El-Alamein, and Guadalcanal and in 1943 the invasions of Sicily and the victory at Midway, for those living through those years things looked very much in doubt. The Nazis controlled nearly all of Europe with troops in Norway, Coastal France, the Low Countries, Poland, North Africa, and Eastern Russia, nearly knocking Russia out in the process. The rest of Europe either run by puppet states such as Vichy France or Allies such as Fascist Italy or, like Sweden and Switzerland, staying neutral. In the East, things were little better with Japan, having nearly crippled our Pacific Fleat at Pearl Harbor controlling Indochina, Manchuria, Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and was creeping west towards British India and south towards Australia.

And what the British and Americans had heard about the Japanese and the Germans (and the Italians to a lesser extent) made it clear they posed to freedom, democracy, and even the basic tenets of civilization. When he Japanese entered Nanking they engaged in atrocities that might even shock ISIS, raping girls as young as 6 and holding “beheading contests” between officers. As for the Nazis, although the full extent of the Holocaust was not publicly known, the West was quite aware that of their brutality. The Nazis had kick-started their regime by killing a bunch of fellow Nazis in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934 then spending the rest of the decade passing anti-semitic laws, cracking down on free speech, bombing civilian areas in Spain, euthanizing the physically and mentally “unfit”, organizing pogroms against the Jews, and organizing concentration camps for “undesirables”.

Upon entry into World War 2 they, and this is quite a list, had violated the neutrality of the Low Countries (despite their own assurances otherwise), then using bombing campaigns against civilian areas of those countries to direct civilians into the way of the British and French armies and thus slowing them down, when France fell they carried out a massive bombing campaign British civilian areas, ramped up deportations to concentration camps, and massacred all the men in the town of Lidice and shipped all the women and children to concentration camps in July of 1942, an act which, unlike other massacres, was announced quite openly and proudly in German media.

One might say the dire situation facing the allies and the free world in general was, in modern lingo, “no laughing matter.” One might further say that attempting to make light of the allies would be “insensitive,” given the acts of German and Japanese barbarism going on.

Yet, in late-1942 (but released on Jan 1, ’43) Walt Disney produced a Donald Duck cartoon called “Der Fuehrer’s Face” featuring Donald living under Nazi oppression set to a song by Spike Jones of the same name as the cartoon with much of the song sung by a tall, thin Goebbels and support from Il Duche Mussolini, General Tojo, and a rather effeminate, flute-playing Goering. Here are some sample lyrics:

When Der Fuehrer Says “We is de Master Race”
We Heil, Heil, right in Der Fuehrer’s face

And that is one of the softer lines. Here are some more:

(Goebbels) Is this Nazi land so good
Would you leave it if you could?
(Chorus) Ja this Nazi land is good
(Mussolini) We would leave it if we could

(Goebbels) We bring the world new order
(Tojo) Heil Hitler's world to order
(Goebbels) Everyone of foreign race
Will love der fuehrer's face
When we bring to the world ‘dis order

It won an Oscar for Best Animated Short.

And Britain, who had lost 40,000 civilians in the London Blitz to Nazi air raids, the equivalent of 13 World Trade Centers, released a short little film featuring clips of Hitler, the German Army, and the SS taken from newsreels and Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will edited in a rather zany fashion to the British dance, the “Lambeth Walk”: Link.

Amusing? Allegedly Goebbels didn’t think so, as a story goes that he put its creator, Charles Ridley, on a secret list of people to be taken out by the Gestapo when Britain was defeated.

But what about the soldiers? They must not jokes about the people who are trying to murder them so funny? To that I recommend that you read this crude little ditty allegedly created by British soldiers in World War 2 set to the Colonel Bogey March of later Bridge Over the River Kwai fame:

Hitler has only got one ball,
Goering has two but very small,
Himmler, has something sim’lar
And poor old Goebbels has no balls at all!

But, you say, what about people living under ISIS? Surely, they must have a different view!

During the Cold War, the Russians and East Germans, who lived under the full weight of Communist oppression had no problem mocking the government whether it was pointing out that the reason the horribly-made East German Trabant car puts its heater in the back is to keep your hands warm while pushing it or that the KGB worked in teams of three because the KGB needed “one to read, one to write, and one to keep an eye on the two intellectuals”.

And if you think that is all just light humor give The Lives of Others a viewing and take notice of the fear of the Stasi’s reach the East Germans had to live with or crack open Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago and remember that he was originally sentenced to the Gulags for cracking a joke about Stalin’s mustache.

ISIS, one of the most depraved organizations in the modern world, deserves all the mockery we can throw at it. Humor is one of the best weapons in the arsenal of democracy. If our grandparents could mock the Nazis in the darkest hours of World War 2, if citizens living behind the Iron Curtain could risk their lives mocking their respective communist regimes, we can surely lob a few jokes at the Islamic State’s expense.

If not, then what was the point of #JeSuisCharlie? Or is it okay to mock Mohammed but not ISIS?

Thoughts?


*This nonsense was peddled by people on the Left as well but I picked on Fox News because, well, they should know better.

[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

Kit's Thoughts: UNC Shooting, the Media, and Evil

by Kit

Craig Stephens Hicks’ alleged murder of 3 Muslims at UNC’s Chapel Hill brought about in the media a brief surge of euphoria as they finally had their hands on a bigoted white conservative in a red state (purple, actually) murdering 3 Muslims. They ran it incessantly, raising questions about the hatred in America and pointing out that Christians can be just as violent as Muslims —that is until it was revealed that Mr. Hicks was not only an Atheist, in the sneering Richard Dawkins category, but a progressive liberal, who, according to his wife supported gay marriage and the right to an abortion (two stances that have nothing to do with a person’s views on race) and killed the 3 people not over their religion or race but because of a long-standing parking dispute.

The story lingered for a day or two before quietly slipping from the media’s sight. Now, this story, like Giffords mass shooting, Aurora mass shooting, and the shooting of Michael Brown, provides another example of the Mainstream Media (CNN, MSNBC, ABC, etc.) jumping onto a story they believe fits their own worldview, quickly constructing a narrative around it, only to see it be revealed that said narrative is completely false or things are far more complex than they appear.

Now, two things:

First, the media only considers the murder of non-whites news-relevant if the shooter is (1) white and (2) carried it out because of race/religion.

Now, in feminist media circles there is a thing called the Bechdel test which looks at films and asks the following questions about a film: (1) Does it feature more than one female character, (2) Do they talk to each other, and (3) Do they have a conversation where they talk about something other than a man? Now, even many feminists have pointed out its problems as movies such as Das Boot, Name of the Rose, and Stalag 17 would fail the test. Even Mulan fails. But even I can acknowledge it does raise a point about how women are written even if it misses the mark entirely (well-rounded characters are the problem).

Anyway, there is a similar test involving minority characters that runs along similar lines: do their interactions, or, rather, does their existence solely involve whites.

And it seems, the news media is only interested interested in minorities if their actions involve whites. Or to be more specific, as far as the media is concerned it seems members of a minority , unless said member is President, only exists when they are victims of white racism. How progressive.

Second, notice how the shooter’s wife was immediately more concerned about him being seen as a racist than as a person who callously took the lives of 3 other people. Claire Berlinski summed this up well:

“Have we actually entered a universe in which it sounds exonerating to say, “My husband shoots people in the head over long-standing parking disputes, regardless of their race, religion, or creed?””

It appears we have. It seems we have made such a monster out of racism that it dwarfs all other evils, making it an elevation of one’s character to discover that he would shoot a person in the head over a parking dispute whether he was white, black, or an Auburn fan.

He may be a callous, cold-blooded murderer who kills people over trivial parking disputes but at least he’s not a bigot.

Perhaps it is because the Left prefers the evils it can understand. Racism as an evil is easy to “understand” because it can be so easily attributed to “close-mindedness” or, as is common on campuses these days, “privilege”.

But the more ancient and universal evils; those listed in the Old Testament as Pride, Lust, Gluttony, Sloth, Envy, Greed, and Wrath are a bit harder to understand and, as such, the media prefers to avoid discussion of them. You see, they exist in the heart of every man, woman, and child, no matter how tolerant and accepting they are of people of other races, religions, and sexual orientations, as Mr. Hicks, displaying perhaps the ultimate dangers of Wrath, if his wife’s claim is to be believed.

And it is that existence that is the ultimate proof of the flawed and fixed nature of humanity that progressivism, with its utopian ideals and unconstrained vision for the world, denies.

[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

Kit's Thoughts: The Ukraine and ISIL

Two thoughts from Kit tonight...


By Kit

Ukraine

A massive but subtle split has occurred among journalists reporting on the Ukraine conflict about whether they should refer to the collapse of the Ukrainian ceasefire in the present tense or the past tense. Is it “crumbling” or has it “crumbled”?

The reason for the confusion is because of the insistence by pro-Russian insurgents (Donetsk People’s Republic) on the Hamas definition of a ceasefire; You will “cease firing” on us while we “keep firing” on you at our leisure. This week things revolved around a group of forces trapped in the town of Debaltseve, which is encircled by the Donetsk People’s Republic. The DPR said they could leave if they laid down their heavy arms and then left. The Ukrainian government was reluctant because the last time this happened the DPR shelled the retreating forces anyway but they have now withdrawn most of their forces from the city (with weapons).

Now the Guardian is reporting shelling and gunfire near other towns and the rebels appear to be advancing towards a key coastal city, the Ukrainian-held Mariupol. Debaltseve was an important rail juncture and its loss was a major blow to Kiev. The loss of Mariupol would also be a major blow and would allow Putin to ship arms to the insurgents by sea.

As Putin backs the insurgents with heavy weapons Obama, still unsure as to whether Ukraine should be given military arms, continues to supply the Ukrainian military with much-needed night-vision goggles.

ISIL (I’m an Archer fan)

As ISIL continues to behead and immolate prisoners and hostages and entrench itself in the territory it has grabbed a CBS news poll showed that 57% of Americans support the use of ground troops against ISIL. This is a huge increase from 47% support back in October. The current ideological breakdown is 86% of Republicans, 61% of Democrats, and 57% of Independents.

As for Obama, the President is asking for an Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIL —that would prohibit the use of ground troops. Also, it would last 3 years, going into his successor’s term.

As Obamacare unravels Obama’s foreign policy also appears to be falling apart.

[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

Kit's Thoughts: Nature vs. Nurture vs. Free Will

[Ed.] Today we’re starting a new series. Our very own Kit often sends me emails dealing with topics he encounters at school which are rather interesting. I’ve asked him to turn some of these into quasi-articles so they can be shared with all of you. Tonight’s topic involves the nature versus nurture debate. Enjoy!

Nature vs. Nurture vs. Free Will
By Kit

The more I look at the nature vs. nurture debate the more I find it to be very inadequate. Though I lean heavily towards "Nurture" and the belief that the environment in which one is raised has a big impact on your adulthood, both fail to adequately explain why some people are good and others are bad.

The reason? Both leave out that frightening wild card: Free Will.

Or, rather, one’s choices becoming one’s habits. When a person makes one good choice it becomes easier to make a good choice in the future. Especially if it is risky. Conversely, if a person makes one bad choice it becomes easier for that person to make bad choices again in the future. These choices add up to habits, both good and bad, and those habits add up to form one’s personality.

I’ll grant that people who advocate Nurture/Environment/Culture do usually acknowledge free will, but those who claim Nature/Genetics to be the reason for good and bad behavior deny free will and the power of choice more sternly than even the most fanatical of Hyper-Calvinists. They firmly believe in the doctrine of Predestination, but one of random genetic mixing instead of divine sovereignty.

That is because Free Will is a Wild Card. Nature and Nurture are favored because they provide easy solutions. Nature opens the doorway to sterilization or brain re-wiring while Nurture says good parenting and good teaching.

However, if it is true that in any society a certain number of people will simply decide to be bad, for no clearly defined reason other than they want to do bad things and enjoy doing it.

Interestingly, while scientists and theologians have spent centuries struggling with this question, artists have long since answered it. Shakespeare understood it when he had Macbeth slip from war hero to mad tyrant as the blood he spilt when he killed King Duncan begets more and more blood, each act easier than the last, and when he had Prince Hamlet say to his mother, urging her to avoid the King’s amorous advances,

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery,
That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,

“For use almost can change the stamp of nature”. Billy Wilder knew it. Spielberg knew it when he filmed Schindler’s List and compared Oskar Schindler to Amon Goethe. Both German, both Nazis, both lovers of wine and women, yet one was a hero and the other a villain. Why? Schindler decided to save life while Goethe decided to take it. No real reason, it is just what they chose to do.

The artist, who must make a living from delving into all of the facets of human nature, even when he is the son of a small town English glove maker and only had a “grammar school education”, seems to have a leg up on those who study it professionally at universities and seminaries.

[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...