"Every one of the Democrats is a devout believer in emissions caps."
Thomas Oliphant, Boston Globe
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
Golden Compass
My daughter coerced me into taking her to The Golden Compass, that atheist movie, as I call it. I was prepared to de-program her afterwards from the atheist message I have been warned about. I confess that if all those worried people hadn’t pointed out that “Magisterium” is the name the Catholic Church uses to describe itself, the anti-Church message would have flown right over me, like those slinky witches in the movie. I don’t like kids thinking daemons are cool and witches are good, but even if the bad guys were called Catholics, it’s a fantasy world that bears no relation to the Pope and the Vatican and the Catholic church down the street. The bad guys are fascist villains cut out of the same central casting mold as Darth Vader's Empire. Or Al Gore's Church of Global Warming. Apparently many liberals interpreted the East German Stasi in The Lives of Others as a metaphor for Bush’s fascist shock troops. They both monitor phone calls! People bring their pre-conceptions into the movie theatre; secular progressives might have their disdain for religion confirmed by The Golden Compass. It seems to me that if the Magisterium is evil because they want to tell you what to think and how to live, the movie could just as well be a critique of big government liberalism.
Narrow Notions of Nationalism
Getting steamed up about the latest James Carroll column is a sucker’s game. He’s a well-educated moron who shouldn’t be taken seriously. But he does get published twice weekly in the Boston Globe, which means apparently some people do take him seriously. Scary thought.
Today’s column is about religion in America. Here’s a sample:
Where to begin? It is rich to have one of the smuggest men in journalism criticize American smugness. And by America, he means those Red State Americans who still cling to the “narrow notions of nationalism”—that atavistic belief that America should remain a sovereign nation. James Carroll on the other hand is a global citizen, in exile among an unenlightened people. He pledges allegiance to the United Nations; the Internationale is his anthem.
It is strange that the anti-globalism people who smash McDonald’s windows and burn SUVs at G-8 conferences are the same ones who want to create a global bureaucracy—more power to U.N. kleptocrats and new Kyoto-style regulation of American businesses doing business in America. When they say that they celebrate diversity because our children need to navigate an increasingly globalized world, it sounds like they are dreaming of training businessmen to make money in Tom Friedman’s flat world of international supply chains, but they despise Wal-Mart and any capitalist enterprise. The kind of globalization they’re dreaming of is one-world government. They’re dreaming that one day our kids will become Ministers in the new World Climate Regulatory Board headquarters in Khartoum. If big government on local, state and national levels is a measure of compassion, why not dream really big and add another layer: big international government?
A few choice phrases in the selection above:
--“They were resolutely turning away from government-sanctioned killing.”
What he’s describing is the fact that Europe no longer pays for its own defense. Since they have someone else (the U.S. military) to do their “government-sanctioned killing” for them, they can put on airs of moral superiority. Smug is too kind a word.
-- “hair-trigger readiness for war”
Calling a two year long process a “rush to war” in Iraq apparently isn’t histrionic enough.
And finally: “the United States [is] an impediment to the United Nations.” Yes, thankfully.
Today’s column is about religion in America. Here’s a sample:
Yet such American smugness seems to miss the largest point of difference between the Old World and the New. In the very years that majorities of Europeans were walking away from organized religion, they were resolutely turning away from government-sanctioned killing, whether through war or through the death penalty; they were leaving behind narrow notions of nationalism, mitigating state sovereignty, and, above all, replacing ancient hatreds with partnerships. All of this stands in stark contrast to the United States, where the most overtly religious people in the country support the death penalty, the government's hair-trigger readiness for war, and the gospel of national sovereignty that has made the United States an impediment to the United Nations.
Where to begin? It is rich to have one of the smuggest men in journalism criticize American smugness. And by America, he means those Red State Americans who still cling to the “narrow notions of nationalism”—that atavistic belief that America should remain a sovereign nation. James Carroll on the other hand is a global citizen, in exile among an unenlightened people. He pledges allegiance to the United Nations; the Internationale is his anthem.
It is strange that the anti-globalism people who smash McDonald’s windows and burn SUVs at G-8 conferences are the same ones who want to create a global bureaucracy—more power to U.N. kleptocrats and new Kyoto-style regulation of American businesses doing business in America. When they say that they celebrate diversity because our children need to navigate an increasingly globalized world, it sounds like they are dreaming of training businessmen to make money in Tom Friedman’s flat world of international supply chains, but they despise Wal-Mart and any capitalist enterprise. The kind of globalization they’re dreaming of is one-world government. They’re dreaming that one day our kids will become Ministers in the new World Climate Regulatory Board headquarters in Khartoum. If big government on local, state and national levels is a measure of compassion, why not dream really big and add another layer: big international government?
A few choice phrases in the selection above:
--“They were resolutely turning away from government-sanctioned killing.”
What he’s describing is the fact that Europe no longer pays for its own defense. Since they have someone else (the U.S. military) to do their “government-sanctioned killing” for them, they can put on airs of moral superiority. Smug is too kind a word.
-- “hair-trigger readiness for war”
Calling a two year long process a “rush to war” in Iraq apparently isn’t histrionic enough.
And finally: “the United States [is] an impediment to the United Nations.” Yes, thankfully.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Church of Global Warming
More religious metaphors from those who "believe" in global warming:
The Boston Sunday Globe reports: "The city planning director briefed [the mayor of Keene, NH] in his third-floor office about the threat of climate change. It was an epiphany, Blastos recalled this month.
"I wanted to do something about it," the 75-year-old mayor said. "Before that, I wasn't carrying a cross for global warming . . ."
The Boston Sunday Globe reports: "The city planning director briefed [the mayor of Keene, NH] in his third-floor office about the threat of climate change. It was an epiphany, Blastos recalled this month.
"I wanted to do something about it," the 75-year-old mayor said. "Before that, I wasn't carrying a cross for global warming . . ."
Thursday, December 13, 2007
In Ahmadinejad We Trust
This week's winner in the idiotic sentence of the week competition:
A letter from a Boston Globe reader in Wood-Ridge, NJ makes a "crucial" point: "Americans may not trust Iran's leaders, but we trust our own less."
I couldn't formulate a more damning indictment of Bush Derangement Syndrome.
A letter from a Boston Globe reader in Wood-Ridge, NJ makes a "crucial" point: "Americans may not trust Iran's leaders, but we trust our own less."
I couldn't formulate a more damning indictment of Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Green scare
If inordinate fear of communism is called a red scare, inordinate fear of global warming should be called a green scare.
Letter in Commentary magazine
Arthur Herman’s otherwise excellent essay “Who Owns the Vietnam War?” (December 2007) appears to downplay the devastating effects of Nixon’s bombing campaigns in Cambodia. He describes the precision of smart bombs and claims that “the collateral damage caused by American bombing [in Vietnam]…was actually very limited.”
Philip Short, Michael Lind, Elizabeth Becker and others offer clear evidence that the US bombing created enormous hardship for Cambodia’s rural populations, causing large peasant migrations to both Phnom Penh and the forests. Regardless of how smart the bombs were, there were a lot of them—according to some accounts, more than were dropped in all of World War II--and many many Cambodian villages were destroyed. The bombing was also an effective recruiting tool for the Khmer Rouge, although the banditry of the South Vietnamese troops in Cambodia was also important in creating support for the Communists.
Although the bombing might be justified by Cambodia’s violation of its claimed neutrality, minimizing the collateral damage makes it easy for the anti-war Left to condemn everything we did in Indochina by pointing to an apparent lack of sympathy for the civilian population.
On the other hand, Mr. Herman is right to dismiss attempts to hold the American bombing accountable for the Cambodian genocide that followed. Some have proposed that the “savage” American bombing drove the Khmer Rouge to respond with savagery of their own—although no other population in history subjected to bombing has reacted by murdering millions of their compatriots. Noam Chomsky went beyond the moral equivalency of this thesis, proposing a morality tale with the United States as the villain and the Khmer Rouge the victim. It is sophistry to blame the anti-Communist campaign of the U.S. when nearly two million Cambodians were murdered by a Marxist-Leninist government whose leader, Pol Pot, adopted the terror strategies of Stalin and Mao. They were called Red Khmers for a reason.
Philip Short, Michael Lind, Elizabeth Becker and others offer clear evidence that the US bombing created enormous hardship for Cambodia’s rural populations, causing large peasant migrations to both Phnom Penh and the forests. Regardless of how smart the bombs were, there were a lot of them—according to some accounts, more than were dropped in all of World War II--and many many Cambodian villages were destroyed. The bombing was also an effective recruiting tool for the Khmer Rouge, although the banditry of the South Vietnamese troops in Cambodia was also important in creating support for the Communists.
Although the bombing might be justified by Cambodia’s violation of its claimed neutrality, minimizing the collateral damage makes it easy for the anti-war Left to condemn everything we did in Indochina by pointing to an apparent lack of sympathy for the civilian population.
On the other hand, Mr. Herman is right to dismiss attempts to hold the American bombing accountable for the Cambodian genocide that followed. Some have proposed that the “savage” American bombing drove the Khmer Rouge to respond with savagery of their own—although no other population in history subjected to bombing has reacted by murdering millions of their compatriots. Noam Chomsky went beyond the moral equivalency of this thesis, proposing a morality tale with the United States as the villain and the Khmer Rouge the victim. It is sophistry to blame the anti-Communist campaign of the U.S. when nearly two million Cambodians were murdered by a Marxist-Leninist government whose leader, Pol Pot, adopted the terror strategies of Stalin and Mao. They were called Red Khmers for a reason.
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